


these things get louder

by kafkian



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Codependency, Dirty Talk, Domestic Fluff, Eating Disorders, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Religious Guilt, Scott & David, The Rainbow, mentions of animal death, mild exhibitionism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-10 10:02:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 58,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11689347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kafkian/pseuds/kafkian
Summary: Mac hatches a secret plan to repair his and Dennis’s friendship. Dennis is pretty sure he knows what the root of the problem is, though, and he isn’t going to let up until Mac admits to it.Set after Season 11.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I watched all of Sunny in less than a month and then I went ‘wow, Dennis sure does say he hates Mac a lot for someone who’s in love with him. Wonder what that’s all about!’ So this fic is kind of about that. It grew though, and it ended up being about a lot of other things too. It's set a few months after the end of Season 11 and isn't compatible with Season 12 for multiple reasons, but they're mostly nice ones.
> 
> It's also the longest damn thing I've ever written, fic or original, and if you'd told me I'd be doing this six months ago, when I'd never watched the show, I would have laughed in your face. Time makes fools of us all. 
> 
> This fic is complete and will contain explicit content from Chapter 2 onwards. I'll add to tags as I go but bear in mind that canon-typical awfulness applies. I'll be updating once a week, every Friday. This is my first Sunny fic, and it's been a challenge to get it finished, but the constant stream of macdennis content on tumblr definitely helped. This is for all of you. 
> 
> As always, endless thanks go to thealchemistsdaughter for a) putting up with me while I ranted about this for months and b) reading sixty thousand words of fanfiction for a show she hasn't watched. You're the real MVP. 
> 
> Title is from The New Pornographers' 'Moves'.

It’s originally Mac’s idea, although Charlie tries to claim credit for it later. 

‘It’s like all he ever does anymore is yell at us, dude,’ Charlie says, voice muffled where he’s got his head jammed into the vent. ‘I don’t think it’d even take that much to push him over the edge.’

‘Right!’ Mac agrees enthusiastically, then frowns. ‘Wait, push him over the edge into what?’

‘Being a serial killer,’ Charlie says, voice spilling out of the vent in a weird reverse echo as he pulls back to frown at Mac. ‘Isn’t that what we’re talking about?’

‘What? No! Charlie, where did you – why would you think that?’

‘Don’t yell at me, man, you’re the one who brought it up –’

‘I didn’t bring _that_ up – why, do you think Dennis is a serial killer?’

Charlie shrugs as he picks up the flashlight, makes a seesawing gesture with his hand.

‘I guess he does keep a lot of weird shit in his car,’ Mac says slowly, squinting as Charlie leans back in and wincing as the flashlight bangs against the side of vent. ‘Dude, you gotta get something smaller, like a lighter, you’re gonna wake ‘em all up with all that noise.’

‘And you think the light’s gonna send ‘em right to sleep?’ Charlie says, pulling back to glare at him. ‘What’s all this about anyway, dude? You worried Dennis is gonna kill you in your sleep or something?’

‘Well I wasn’t _before_ we had this conversation,’ Mac glares, then sighs when Charlie just keeps staring at him, placid and patient. ‘It’s not – it’s not about Dennis being a serial killer, okay? Which I don’t think he is, for the record.’

Charlie looks unconvinced but doesn’t say anything. Mac runs a hand over the back of his neck and blinks down at the floor for a minute, aware of Charlie’s gaze.

‘I really gotta get these rat orphans, dude, can you just spit it out? You know I can’t leave it too long or they’ll start planning and shit – ’

‘Urgh, I’m trying, _Charlie_ ,’ Mac says, glaring, then blows out a long breath while Charlie stares at him, tapping his imaginary wrist watch.

‘Do you think that Dennis really hates me?’ he asks eventually in a small voice, eyes flickering up to catch Charlie’s incredulous expression and then away again. They really need to repaint or something in here, he thinks, staring really hard at the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. The amount of paint and plaster flaking off makes it look almost diseased.

Charlie sighs. Mac tenses, bracing himself for scorn, but Charlie sounds uncharacteristically cautious when he speaks.

‘Are you sure I’m the person you wanna ask about this?’ he says.

Mac blinks at him.

‘Who else am I gonna ask?’ He frowns. ‘You’re like my best friend, aside from Dennis. I mean I asked Frank a while ago because he’s kinda Dennis’ dad-type person even if they’re not actually related, but I don’t even know if he heard me, man, he was like super high. And it’s not like I’m gonna ask _Dee –_ ’

‘I didn’t mean – never mind,’ Charlie says, voice muffled again but this time because he’s got his head buried in his hands.

Mac feels his cheeks heating up and stares down at the floor, his hands rhythmically bunching up into fists and releasing over and over again while he waits, heart thumping like a jackhammer. He doesn’t know why Charlie’s opinion about this matters so much, but right now it seems like one of the most important questions he’s ever asked someone. He doesn’t want to hear that that’s what it looks like to other people – that Dennis _has_ been pulling away from him – but the alternative is that this is all in his head, and that’s even more confusing.

Maybe it’s bumming him out so much because when they were younger, it used to be so easy to tell what Dennis was thinking, even if his actions didn’t match up to his words. When he said ‘gimme a toke, asshole’ and slung an arm around Mac’s shoulder, it made sense, because Dennis didn’t know how to express himself in words. Mac never heard him admit to liking a single living human being except David Bowie, but he wouldn’t turn up every day to smoke with Mac and Charlie if he didn’t want to be there, and even if he just wanted the weed, he sure as hell didn’t have to get so close to Mac to do it.

Now it’s like Dennis would rather be a thousand miles away than stand next to Mac.

‘No,’ Charlie says eventually, sounding pained. He pronounces each word carefully and slowly. ‘I do not think that hating you is Dennis’ problem, man.’

‘Really?’ Mac asks, an almost liquid rush of relief spreading through his gut. ‘Because he’s just being so distant with me, man, he never wants to hang out anymore and he’s told me he hates me like ten times in the last year and –’

Charlie sticks his head back in the vent.

‘Charlie! Aw, come on, dude, you’re like the only person I can talk to about this stuff!’

‘I do not want to talk to you about this stuff,’ Charlie says loudly, then ‘Fuck! There’s so many fucking feathers in here, dude. No wonder they decided to make a nest.’

‘Maybe he just needs something to mellow him out,’ Mac ponders, sitting back down on the desk and gazing pensively at the spider web of cracks pinwheeling across the ceiling. Charlie makes a screeching noise and bashes the flashlight against the side of the vent, and one of the cracks gains another inch. ‘Yeah, that’s it! Things have been so crazy recently and he’s getting all freaked out because he can’t control everything, but maybe if someone smoothed the way a little, you know, he’d calm down. Maybe he’d even realise he doesn’t _need_ to be in control of everything all the time, right? And then he’ll stop being such a dick.’

Charlie’s mumbling something about idiots that Mac assumes is in reference to the rats.

‘What’s that, dude?’

‘Dennis is never going to stop being a dick,’ Charlie half-yells, abruptly pulling out of the vent again. He’s got a nasty looking scratch across his right cheekbone and a crazed look in his eye. ‘He’s never going to stop being a dick, that’s just –’ he makes a windmilling gesture with his hands and nearly hits himself in the face with the flashlight – ‘who he is, you know? You _know,_ Mac. We’ve known the dude for like twenty-five years.’

‘Twenty-six,’ Mac corrects absently. ‘Yeah, but it used to be like, he was a dick and I was a dick and we could be dicks together, you know? Not in a gay way,’ he hurriedly tacks on. Charlie’s eye twitches.

‘You’re still a dick, dude,’ Charlie reassures him.

‘Aw,’ Mac says, smiling big. ‘You too, dude.’

None of that solves the Dennis problem, though. Mac sighs, staring down at his hands, twisting in his lap.

‘You’re really serious about this,’ Charlie says. When Mac looks up, the crazed look has ebbed from Charlie’s eyes and been replaced with something that Mac has always interpreted as a feral form of shrewdness when he’s seen it before. Process of elimination aside, this is why he came to Charlie: sometimes the dude just has these laser-like moments of focus where he just _gets it_ , absolutely nails it, and Mac knows he understands. Even when it hurts, and even when it’s hard to say, Charlie understands.

‘Yeah,’ Mac says simply. ‘I am.’

‘Okay,’ Charlie says on a long and loud exhale. Mac waves a hand in front of his face at the smell but stops when Charlie fixes that single-minded expression on him. ‘Here’s what you’re gonna do.’

\---

Mac starts small – there’s no sense in scaring Dennis off when that’s the opposite goal of this entire operation.

He’s a little stuck on ideas at first because all of Charlie’s suggestions were terrifying – and he’s pretty sure Dennis’s shampoo already has vitamins in it, anyway – and also because Dennis isn’t a chick. Whenever Mac has tried being deliberately nice in anyone’s direction before it’s always been with the intention to get the girl into bed as quickly as possible, with the least amount of effort expended. Which is maybe why he never had as much luck in that department as Dennis, who puts way more time and effort into his banging schemes. Sometimes it seems like he enjoys the planning part almost more than he enjoys the actual sex, but that’s probably because he enjoys fucking with people way too much for it to be healthy.

But even if Dennis is hard to please, there’s a couple of things in the world that everyone can agree on, and one of those things is free baked goods.

‘Dude, where did all these muffins come from?’ he hears Dennis’ bewildered voice float out of the kitchenette one morning. He grins to himself, staring up at the ceiling. Both Dee and old black man have already left the apartment, so it’s just him and Dennis. He got to fall asleep next to Dennis last night because they’d been the last to bed, and no one had elbowed him in the side or wormed in between them during the night. Good day.

‘What’s that, bro?’ he asks innocently, getting out of bed and shuffling through the apartment to Dennis, still in his robe, who is holding a blueberry muffin – skinny and everything! – and staring at it like he’s trying to set it on fire with his eyes. Mac takes a second to admire the house of cards formation he’d crafted the night before; he’d had to clean up the countertop and everything just to get enough space to arrange it. Kind of a shame they weren’t home baked but Mac had irretrievably fucked up every single batch he tried to make before giving up in frustration, and anyway, it wasn’t like Dennis was going to know any different. Those bitches on the Food Network were always saying store-bought was fine if you couldn’t make it at home.

‘Did you do this,’ Dennis asks, his eyes wide and unblinking on the muffin in his hand. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I really don’t think the others have the same kind of bizarre, sporadic drive for homemaking as you.’

‘Hmm?’ Mac mumbles with a mouthful of muffin, blinking at Dennis.

Dennis turns to glare at him. Early morning Dennis is one of Mac’s favourite looks, because his hair falls soft over his forehead in individual curls before he’s had a chance to style it. He’s usually already wearing make up by this point but sometimes if he knows it’s just going to be him and Mac in the apartment, he lets it slide. It used to be the last thing he did before they left for work in their old apartment so that it’d last longer and require less touch up throughout the day, but since they moved in with Dee he’d actually started sneaking out of bed early to put the stuff on. Mac’s known a few chicks who wouldn’t go out of the house without make up on, but he doesn’t know why Dennis needs to worry about that. Dude’s got great skin. Fucking radiant. He boasts about that almost as often as he talks about his abs though, so it’s not like he doesn’t already know. He probably just wants his ego stroked. What an asshole.

‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ he says, whirling to point the muffin threateningly at Mac. ‘You’re the only person I know who even _attempts_ to cook on a semi-regular basis. I don’t think Dee even knows what ovens do.’

‘Pretty sure she helped Charlie make Thanksgiving dinner that one time when we had all the guys round, dude.’

Dennis cocks an eyebrow.

‘Are you referring to the time when our apartment burned down, Mac?’

‘Yeah, but that wasn’t ‘cause of the cooking, remember? Dee helped Charlie make the squash. I bet she mashed it with her giant hands.’

He snorts but Dennis just gives him a suspicious look. Mac blinks at him innocently.

‘Why do people call it like, _making_ squash anyway?’ Mac wonders out loud. ‘You’re not _making_ anything, you’re just squishing a bunch of vegetables in a bowl.’

‘Well, sometimes you put other stuff in there too,’ Dennis points out, his expression softening minutely with the distraction. ‘Like seasoning and herbs and … other stuff. I would assume.’

‘Yeah! Cooking’s like inventing, dude, it’s awesome,’ Mac tells Dennis enthusiastically. Mac didn’t get why people acted like baking was girly. You had to utilise real strength to beat the mixture together, and there was the ever-present danger of burning yourself on the baking tray, which Mac actually had done several times. It was totally badass. Maybe next time he should just go totally off book, try and make a different thing altogether than what the recipe said. This was clearly a huge reservoir of untapped potential.

‘Well, not exactly like – wait. Who do you think you’re talking to here, Mac? You’re trying to distract me from the matter at hand.’

‘I am?’

‘Yes, you are!’ Dennis stares at him, clearly irritated that Mac isn’t treating his distress with due consideration. ‘I can’t just be waking up to random baking sprees in the kitchen every morning – it’s thrown off my whole morning routine! Is this going to be a regular occurrence? Is this what living with Dee has done to you? Are you having some kind of mid-life crisis?’

‘Are _you_ having a crisis right now, dude? Is that happening? Jesus Christ, Dennis –’ Mac cuts himself off and shrugs helplessly. Dennis’s gaze tracks his movements like a hawk. ‘It’s just muffins, dude. I won’t do it again, if it’s gonna make you all –’

He gestures at Dennis’s everything.

Dennis glares but holds his gaze as he takes a deep breath and lets it out. Mac breathes with him, letting his hand rise and fall with every one of Dennis’s ten careful deep breaths. Mac beams at him when he gets to the end, giving him a thumbs-up. Sometimes they get to thirty before Dennis’s hands stop shaking, so ten is pretty good going. 

‘Whatever,’ Dennis says eventually, subdued. ‘Do whatever the hell you want, I don’t care. I don’t have time for this, anyway.’

Mac can’t help but snort, ignoring Dennis’s glare as he turns away. He’s never really understood why the rest of the gang go off on that thing about Dennis having no feelings. He’s got more feelings than anyone Mac has ever met, and he’s not even good at hiding it – they flow out of his eyes and from the tips of his fingers; they make the hairs on Mac’s arms stand upright.

‘You should really rethink your brand if you’re going to start with the girly shit, Mac,’ Dennis advises as he sets the muffin back down on the counter with a visible look of longing that he’s probably not even aware of. Mac frowns. ‘Baking isn’t a straight man’s game.’

‘It’s not any girlier than your make-up, bro,’ Mac bitches, hip-checking Dennis to get to the coffee. He ignores the twinge in his stomach. Bringing up homosexuality before caffeine is a low blow.

‘Whatever, dick. I’m sure you’ve got a long and convoluted explanation lined up as to how this little display is somehow masculine in a way that I don’t understand, but I don’t have time for five hours of sermonising right now, so you’ll just have to let it go.’

Dennis stalks off to the bathroom like the drama queen he is before Mac can protest.

‘Take one for –’ Mac starts shouting but Dennis yells ‘Water in my ears, bro,’ as he slams the bathroom door. Mac scowls at the muffin formation. This plan is going to be harder to implement than he thought.

But when he gets out of the shower ready to go to work, the muffin Dennis had left on the counter is gone, and there’s an empty case balled up in the trash. Mac grins and fist pumps. Getting Dennis to eat breakfast on an odd day is like, gold medal tier friendship in action. Maybe the jury’s still out on Project Badass: Make Dennis Not Be A Dick All The Time after all.

\---

Surprising Dennis with delicious foodstuffs is one thing, but Mac can’t just keep surreptitiously leaving cake around the apartment and hoping Dennis finds it: he’s got to step it up a notch. It’s not easy trying to somehow combine all the things Dennis likes best with things that are actually good for him, though. Mac’s thinking mainly about food here, but it turns out that when you get down to it, a lot of the things Dennis enjoys are actively bad for him. He doesn’t even go to the gym to work off all the beer like Mac does! It’s a tough nut to crack.

Mac pencils a list of things that he knows for certain make Dennis happy, in the hopes that this will knock some ideas loose:

  1. Compliments
  2. Large-breasted women
  3. _Predator_ Tuesday
  4. Monthly dinner
  5. That one super gay scene at the end of _Dead Poets Society_ where they all stand on desks and say poetry at each other, although he acts surprised and turns it off every time Mac catches him watching it
  6. Steve Winwood
  7. Crack
  8. Manicures
  9. Watermelon vodka
  10. Being the little spoon
  11. _Velvet Goldmine_
  12. Cats



There aren’t a lot of things on that list that Mac doesn’t already take care of, which means he’s either going to have to get creative or just buy Dennis a cat and hope for the best. Going forward, he definitely needs to be sneakier about it; it kind of ruins the effect if Dennis immediately clocks onto everything and starts yelling because he’s pissed he can’t control all the variables or whatever.

Mac’s still pondering his next move when a new bar abruptly opens on the same block as Paddy’s. They serve drinks with little umbrellas in.

Within three days the owners have filed 50 foot restraining orders on every single member of the gang; they’ve actually filed two on Frank.

‘Just in the case the first one didn’t stick, huh?’ Dee asks, then nods and takes a philosophical drink of her beer. ‘I get it.’

‘We’re gonna get those bitches back,’ Dennis hisses, incandescent with rage. He’d steamrolled right over deity-inspired rhetoric and moved right on through to personal insults when he realised the chick behind the bar he’d been hitting on all week was the one who filed the charges. ‘Idiots! Fucking – they think they can tell me where to walk? Not to walk down my own fucking street? Try and stop _us_ walking down our own damn street, it’s an outrage, a goddamn public _outrage –_ ’

‘Damn right we’re gonna get ‘em back,’ Charlie nods, his eyes crazy wide. He ducks between them and slings one arm around Mac’s shoulder, one around Dennis’s. He’s slipped into his _Law and Order_ voice. ‘And I know just the man to help us.’

‘Okay, a) you still aren’t a lawyer, Charlie,’ Mac begins, ticking conditions off on his fingers, ‘and b) for the love of God, we cannot keep hiring Uncle Jack. We lose like, every case with him, bro. I’m beginning to doubt that man even went to law school.’

‘No, no, no Uncle Jack, he’s still recovering from the uh –’

Charlie waves his hands around wildly, slapping both Mac and Dennis lightly in the face.

‘Dude!’

‘Charlie!’

‘Sorry, sorry.’

‘The hand transplant?’ Mac asks, wiggling his fingers and grimacing. ‘He really went through with that?’

‘You can get anything transplanted nowadays,’ Frank says sagely. ‘Tits, ass –’

‘You can’t get an ass transplant, Frank,’ Dee rolls her eyes.

‘What would you know about it? You ain’t got one to transplant.’

‘Do they work though?’ Mac asks Charlie. He flexes his hand and shivers. ‘Like, can he move his fingers and everything? Did they connect all the bones back up?’

Charlie opens his mouth to answer but Dennis interrupts him with a piercing whistle that grates right through Mac. Charlie makes a whimpering sound, blinking rapidly at Dennis with a look of betrayal.

‘We’re getting off-track,’ Dennis barks at them, detaching himself from under Charlie’s arm and striding out onto the bar floor. He whirls around to address them, a triumphant smile on his face, eyes glittering with malice. ‘I’ve got a plan.’

Mac settles into his seat and half follows the soothing thread of Dennis’s voice as he lays out his scheme, although it seems unnecessarily complicated. Half the fun of teaming up is watching Dennis when he’s all fired up over some asshole who’s done them wrong. It’s not satisfying exactly, because it always leaves Mac grasping for something he can’t put a name to, but it definitely holds his attention. Something happens to Dennis’s eyes when he gets like this, all intense. It’s like they spontaneously get more bigger or more intensely blue or something. And there’s something about the fluid movements of Dennis’s body when he’s gesticulating like that, the casual curl of his lip; it makes you want to crowd him into a corner, get all up in his space, maybe pin his wrists to the wall so he’ll turn all that sneering energy on you –

‘– so, me and Mac’ll grab the stuff and meet you guys after, okay?’

Mac snaps out of his trance just in time to brace for Dennis grabbing his arm and bodily hefting him out of the chair in his manic determination.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he mutters. Dennis glances at him out of the corner of his eye and smiles slightly; his grip softens but he doesn’t let go.

Four hours later, they stare up at the outside of the rival bar in silence.

‘Why does it always come down to this?’ Mac wonders out loud. ‘We’re creative people. We’ve got good ideas. We can do better than TP-ing, dude. That thing with the mandolin and the melon baller, that was really good, Dennis.’

Dennis rolls his eyes and bumps Mac’s shoulder. He doesn’t move away again, keeps swaying into Mac even when Mac’s gaze jerks to him involuntarily, snagging on the pink of Dennis’s lip, the hinge of his jaw. He cut himself shaving yesterday and bitched about it the whole ride to work. For the rest of the day he kept pulling Mac aside to ask if it looked infected, did Mac think it would leave a scar? Mac didn’t think much of anything at all, that close to Dennis’s jawline. He was using way too much aftershave and it was almost totally overpowering; Mac felt dizzy just thinking about it.

Dennis catches Mac’s eye and looks away, half a smirk gracing his lips. 

‘You bring it out in me, Mac,’ he agrees. His voice is soft, without the commanding element it would have if the rest of the gang were with them. But they’re not; it’s just the two of them out here, under the stars. Not that that means anything. They’re alone together all the time in the apartment. It doesn’t mean anything.

The plume of Dennis’s breath rises in the cold air like smoke.

‘We make a good team,’ Mac replies, smiling at him and resisting the urge to yank on his collar just for something to do with his hands. The air out here feels staticky and thick for a reason he can’t put his finger on; his palms itch. Maybe his body’s finely tuned situational awareness is flagging up the homeless guy down the alley as a threat or something. He tries to shake it off, smiling even more brightly. ‘Blood brothers, right, Dennis?’

Dennis blinks and inhales hard and deep at that. He gives one of those weird, almost desperate laughs they’ve all got so used to hearing. It hits Mac like a punch in the gut.

‘Blood brothers. Right. Of course.’

Mac blinks down at the ground, shoving his hands hard into the pockets of the duster. He should be angry Dennis is laughing at him again, but it’s happened so many times that all his anger got used up, and now it just hurts. He wishes there was some way he could detach himself from this, some way he could make it go away. Sometimes his feelings about Dennis feel like they’re taking up too much space in his body and they’re going to come bursting out before he can stop them, no matter how strong he is. It makes him feel slow and stupid and almost drunk, and the worst of it is in moments like this, when he knows Dennis can tell; when Dennis can see right through him with no trouble at all, like he can just shove every paltry defence out of the way with an impatient hand: _get the fuck out of my way, asshole. This is mine._

Dennis’s stare is burning a hole in the side of Mac’s head. He takes a breath like he’s about to say something. Mac squares his shoulders, his fists clenching inside his pockets.

‘Mac, I –’

A burst of synth erupts from Dennis’s jeans pocket and Mac’s brain recognises it after a brief, scrambling moment; the early demo of _Dayman_ that Dennis set as his ringtone.

Dennis’s jaw audibly clicks shut and he fumbles in his jacket pocket for the phone, swearing an endless stream under his breath.

‘What,’ he answers tersely. Mac risks a glance; he’s frowning up at the bar like it personally wronged him. Which, to be fair, it did. They’re violating their restraining orders this very second. They really should get out of here.

And then just like that, the switch flips in Dennis’s expression. He frowns, his gaze flicking to Mac as his eyebrows rise and then fall in exasperation. Mac sighs. Charlie must have said something – done something – stupid or Dee’s fucked up the one small aspect of the plan they entrusted to her, and in a second the world is rebalanced on its axis; they’re back on the same side, watching it all fall apart with their faces in their palms, wondering why they trust these dumbasses with anything more complicated than holding their jackets.

‘Yeah, we – wait wait wait, did you get Dee to read the paperwork, Charlie?’

Dennis rolls his eyes at Mac with no lingering trace of irritation or contempt. Mac grins back, his heart still hammering in his chest. And if everything Mac thought before was true, then so is this: every time they wipe the slate clean, the relief is so powerful it’s almost a drug. He’s been over and over it for years and this is the solution he came up with: God must have moulded them this way, so that no matter how far Mac bends, he’ll never entirely break. In the end, it doesn’t matter if he can’t hide from Dennis, because Dennis isn’t brave enough to search him out.

It’s reassuring, really. It’s good. It’s good that they’re like this.

Dennis slings a casual arm around Mac’s shoulder as they walk away from the bar and Mac lets himself sink into the rare contact; safe, for a given value of the word.

\---

Mac doesn’t get another opportunity to progress the plan until the next _Predator_ Tuesday, and then he genuinely considers passing it up just because of how fundamentally _wrong_ Dennis is.  

‘You can’t compare _Terminator_ to _Thunder Gun Express,_ dude, they’re totally different movies.’

‘Mac, you know I love _Thunder Gun,_ but they are fundamentally the same movie. They just are, dude, there’s nothing wrong with that. If it ain’t broke –’

‘I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that, Dennis. Those movies are sacred and so help me _God,_ if you keep talking shit I’m gonna –’

‘You’re going to what, Mac?’

Dennis stops walking and turns to glare at Mac in the hallway. The effect of his glare is dampened slightly by the fact that he’s clutching bags of popcorn and chips to his chest like someone might try to steal them if he even remotely relaxes his grip. Mac arches one eyebrow.

‘Then I’m going to return the brand-new copy of _Thunder Gun Goes Nuclear_ I just picked up while you were getting the snacks,’ he replies silkily, slipping past Dennis and his stunned silence and into the apartment. The flat of Dennis’s palm hits the door just as it was about to close, and the sound is so satisfying Mac can’t help but grin.

‘But it’s not even out in theaters yet,’ Dennis mutters, staring at Mac, his eyes saucer-wide. ‘How did you –’

‘Old dealing buddy of mine runs a side-scam on advance screening DVDs,’ Mac interrupts, rocking back and forth on his heels, unable to contain his excitement any longer and whipping out the DVD case. Dennis makes an _oh_ noise and grabs it out of his hands, unceremoniously dropping the snacks on the floor. The bag of popcorn bursts, scattering kernels across the carpet. Dennis doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Isn’t that the best? I kept it back so we can watch it before any of the others and rub it in their faces.’

And conned Dee and Charlie into following Frank to see his weird bridge friends so they’d be alone in the apartment for a viewing, but something holds Mac back from including that part. This thing with Dennis is a fine balancing act, and that information might tip things over into dangerous territory. And anyway, the expression on Dennis’s face right now is enough.

‘That’s awesome, dude,’ Dennis says, staring at the DVD cover in rapt amazement. His gaze flickers up to Mac’s face and his mouth curves into an answering grin until they’re both just standing there smiling at each other. Dee still hasn’t replaced the bulb that blew out in the living room a week ago, so they’re standing there with nothing but the watery light drifting in from the streetlights outside to see by. Maybe it’s only the absence of harsh high-wattage bulbs but Dennis looks unexpectedly, almost woundingly soft now that they’re finally standing still and Mac is paying attention. He’s wearing the comfy clothes they both tend to adopt on movie nights: a t shirt that’s been passed between them so many times Mac knows exactly where the material is beginning to thin at the nape of the neck, could trace with a fingertip the pattern that’s mostly flaked away under the strain of a decade’s washing. Half an eagle swoops under Dennis’s left rib. _Go Birds!_

Mac clears his throat, scratching the back of his neck. Dennis’s gaze drops back down to the DVD case. His fingers stroke thoughtfully along the plastic spine. 

‘I’ve been wanting to see this for _months,_ ’ he says when they settle down on the sofa to watch, his expression awed when the rolling credits begin. Mac smiles contentedly and mentally checks another box on his Make Dennis Happy list.

But then Dennis pauses the movie, movements stiff as if he’s just thought of something jarring.

‘What about _Predator_ Tuesday?’ he asks in this odd tone of voice. He clears his throat but doesn’t relax one iota. ‘Not that we haven’t seen _Predator_ like, a million times. It’s not like I care. It’s just, you know.’

He’s still staring at the screen, unnervingly intent.

‘We’ll do it next Tuesday,’ Mac says gently. Dennis’s hand is resting an inch away from Mac’s on the sofa; it looks like an accident, just where it landed, but now Mac feels compelled not to move away even though he really wants to open the chips. He doesn’t understand how sometimes Dennis’s body can feel so much like an extension of his own that it doesn’t mean anything to have Dennis throw an arm round his shoulder, and then there are times like this, when the inch of space between their hands on the sofa feels alive and liquid with potential motion. This – just watching a movie together on the sofa, no one else around – this was supposed to be simple. Why can’t anything just be simple anymore?

‘We could do it tomorrow,’ Dennis says, sounding incredibly grudging about it.

‘Then it won’t be _Predator_ Tuesday,’ Mac points out. Dennis already knows that – he wouldn’t be so reluctant to disturb the rhythm of their routine otherwise – but it’s uncharacteristically nice of him to offer anyway. Sometimes he does this though; someone does something nice for him and he jerks around like a marionette, trying to find an appropriate way to respond, making random stabs in the dark that he’ll later decide to take back.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Dennis says with a barely audible sigh of relief. He presses play and they watch, rapt. Mac’s arm gets a cramp as he sits there without moving, ruthlessly smothering the impulse to reach out and take Dennis’s hand.

\---

A nasty stomach flu cuts through Philly like a razor, leaving everyone in the bar bleeding from the immune system.

‘We’ll be fine if we just keep drinking,’ Dee says blearily, her gigantic limbs folded into one of the booths. Her eyes are so red Mac can’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy, although it’s heavily tinged with disgust. ‘Alcohol will heal us. Charlie, can you get me a beer? Charlie. Charlie. Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarlie. Charlie. Charlie. Charlieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.’

‘He’s passed out behind the bar, bitch,’ Mac half-yells, pulling his head up from his folded arms to glare. ‘Get yourself a beer. And get me one too.’

Dee makes a pitiful noise and flops one arm out over the table. She’s been wearing the same clothes for three days. Mac isn’t entirely clear on whether or not she’s actually been home in that time. Or whether or not he has, for that matter. Everything before the last hour is kind of blurry. He has a hazy picture in his mind of a pill bottle on his bedside table, a glass of water. A handful of multivitamins. He’d rolled over and taken them and hadn’t asked any questions, and from the grainy, faraway quality of the memory that might have happened yesterday or five years ago.

‘I’m going to die,’ Dee intones, and Mac grunts in agreement. His head pounds with an interminable rhythm that drags him down into the floor; gravity isn’t playing fair. He shakes and sweats worse than when they went into withdrawal.

‘You’re all going to die,’ Dennis says cheerfully, polishing a glass and nudging Charlie delicately with his foot. ‘I’m serious, I can’t even tell if Charlie’s breathing or not.’

‘You’re gonna get sick, dude,’ Mac groans, levering himself up so he can go and collapse in the booth next to Dee. Horizontal is good. Horizontal is home. ‘You’re gonna get sick, and then you’ll be sorry.’

‘I’m not going to get sick, Mac,’ Dennis corrects. His voice is light and carrying and perfect, and Mac wants to punch it in the face. ‘My superior immune system has fought off the bug that is laying the rest of you low, and you need to face up to it. There’s no shame in accepting defeat.’

Mac tries to growl as he faceplants into the booth, but his mouth mashes against the pleather so it comes out more like a whimper. Dee gives him a pained, sarcastic round of applause.

‘It’s pathetic, really,’ Dennis goes on. ‘If you all took better care of yourselves we wouldn’t go through this every time a bug goes around town. Not one of you has so much as _attempted_ to follow the diet plans I made up for you – purely out of the goodness of my heart, I might add – in an attempt to impart the skills I’ve honed through years of sustaining my own physical perfection. Not _one_ –’

‘Dennis, those diet plans are insane,’ Dee interrupts hoarsely, voice thready and weak. Mac flops over onto his back and props himself up against the wall so he has a better view of Dennis at the bar. If he’s going to have to listen to this bewildering and frankly irritating conversation, he might as well have a decent view. ‘You wanted me to eat a brazil nut for lunch. _One_ brazil nut. Every day. For lunch.’ She pauses. ‘You said I could have two on Mondays.’

‘Well, Mondays are difficult,’ Dennis points out, and Mac can’t help but nod in agreement, although it sets his head thumping again so he stops, wincing. Having a body is so exhausting.

‘Yeah, Dee, Mondays are the worst.’

‘See? Mac knows,’ Dennis says proudly. ‘Everyone deserves a little extra on Mondays.’

Mac makes a disgruntled noise.

‘You wanted me to drink only lemon and honey with hot water like, four days of every week, dude,’ he interjects. ‘I’m not on your side here.’

‘That honey and lemon cleanse has provided some cast-iron scientific evidence, Mac,’ Dennis says, putting down the glass he was polishing and bracing himself against the bar, glaring at the two of them.

‘Scientific evidence of _what_?’

‘Of, of success! Proof that it _works,_ goddamn it –’

‘Of course you’ll lose weight if you don’t eat for four days,’ Dee croaks. ‘That’s basic science, Dennis.’

‘Thank you, Dee! An odd interjection from a woman who’s been throwing up for three days and still can’t shake the baby weight from five goddamn years ago, but I’ll take it.’

‘But it’s not _sustainable,_ Dennis,’ Dee grits out, refusing to be deterred. Mac can’t see her face because the booth is in the way but he knows exactly what it looks like: Dennis is wearing the same snarl right now. ‘None of those diets were sustainable! We’d be dead within a month.’

‘You’d be _thin_ within a month, Dee, but none of you took me seriously, and look where you are now.’

He gestures to the deserted bar and shakes his head sorrowfully, the effect ruined by the faint smirk twisting his mouth. 

‘Charlie might be dead, Dee. Charlie might actually be dead, and all because none of you followed my diet plans.’

‘Check him again, dude,’ Mac suggests. ‘We can’t have another dead person in the bar, remember? It’s like, a rule now.’

‘That’s true,’ Dennis muses.

‘No,’ Charlie’s mangled voice drifts up from behind the bar. ‘Don’ kick me, nope.’

‘Charlie! You’re not dead,’ Mac cheers, then hiccups. The bar’s gone kind of blurry. Dennis’s figure is both distorted and sharp, like a magnifying lens smeared with something greasy. Mac closes his eyes and leans his head back. 

‘You okay down there, buddy?’ Dennis asks Charlie, his voice syrupy sweet like he’s talking to a small child he plans to rob. ‘You liked your diet plan, right?’

‘No.’

‘He’s delirious,’ Dennis dismisses, going back to polishing the glass. ‘Doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

‘You tried to get him to go vegan, Dennis,’ Mac mumbles. ‘Shoulda known he couldn’t give up on cheese.’

 ‘And you tried to make us all eat _kale_ for dinner,’ Dee interjects wildly, her voice cracking right down the middle. ‘ _Kale_. For _dinner_.’

‘Kale is very good for you,’ Dennis protests. Mac can picture the frown on his face right now, hooked up to the disbelieving tone of his voice. He could make a key of all Dennis’s mopey voices and match them to his different pissed off faces, like pin the tail on the donkey. Pin the shrieking on the hissy fit.

‘I know a dude called Kale,’ Mac observes, pleasantly drifting on a tidal wave of fuzz. Something rumbles in his stomach less than a second later. He lurches to the side and throws up under the table.

‘I bet he knows him from the gym,’ Dee says after a pause. ‘All the assholes in the gym are called Kale.’

Dennis gets sick a week later.

‘I’m not sick,’ he says petulantly, footsteps wobbly as Mac steers him away from the door of Dee’s apartment. ‘You’re wrong.’

‘You can’t go into work today, dude,’ Mac explains patiently for the fifth time, kicking open the door to the bedroom and steering him back to bed. Mac took his eye off him for like five minutes and the guy managed to get himself dressed and start sneaking out, but he can’t even walk in a straight line. Then again, he only applied mascara to one eye and his shirt’s on backwards, so he’s not winning any awards for follow through. 

Dennis sits down hard on the bed and blinks up at Mac woozily, swaying a little from side to side. His skin is flushed, his complexion sallow under unevenly applied make up; sweat beads on his brow. Mac grimaces as he cups Dennis’s forehead to test his temperature, wishing he’d thought to grab a towel. Dennis leans into his hand, his eyelids fluttering shut on a long, petulant exhale.

Mac stares down at him, held in place. It’s like being sat on by a cat; God forbid you need to move after they settle down to sleep on your lap. Dennis gets like this sometimes when he’s drunk too, but he’s at his clingiest when he’s sick. The last time he got the flu was back in their old apartment, and Mac ended up sleeping in bed with him because Dennis wouldn’t stop calling his cell at three in the morning, totally delirious, to complain about the human-sized Kit-Kats whispering to him from the corner of his bedroom. Dennis’s clammy hands had clung tight to Mac as soon as he slipped between the sheets, twisting in his t shirt as he made soft whimpering sounds of fright. He didn’t let go all night, not even in his sleep.

Dennis isn’t that far gone right now. Mac doesn’t know why he doesn’t take his hand away, he’s got no idea how you’re supposed to measure temperature like this. He’s not a goddamn thermostat. Who knows how hot Dennis is? Hot as shit, probably.

‘I’m not sick, Mac,’ Dennis says dreamily, still leaning into Mac’s hand. His lower lip is trembling and his forehead creases with irritation as his shivers become more pronounced. ‘I’m thriving. My body is ridding itself of toxins.’

‘Yeah?’ Mac asks dubiously. ‘You don’t look like you’re thriving, dude. You look sick as a dog. You need to rest.’

‘Why do you care?’ Dennis asks, and this time he pulls back from the contact, opens his eyes and stares at Mac. Or at least, where he clearly thinks Mac should be. His pupils keep focusing and unfocusing as he frowns, clearly trying to decide which of the many Macs in his field of vision is the real one. ‘You don’t care. You just don’t wanna get sick too.’

‘Already been sick, remember?’ Mac reminds him, seizing the opportunity to hunch down and pull off Dennis’s shoes. ‘Bro, I wasn’t sold on the Velcro thing before but I gotta say, I’m loving the easy access. You can take ‘em on and off like super quick!’

‘I know, right!’ Dennis beams at him with the easily distracted glee of a toddler. Mac could probably get him to do some truly foolish shit in this state, but his options are limited considering Dennis can barely stand up and also, it’s over the line to take advantage of a bro with flu. They’ve got that written down somewhere, Mac is sure of it. He doesn’t know much about taking care of sick people but at least he knows that, and TV filled him in on the chicken soup side of things. He doesn’t have much first-hand experience, because his mom usually just left him to his own devices when he was sick. A couple times she actually moved out for a few days to make sure she didn’t get sick too. That’s probably why he grew up to be such a badass, like those Spartan kids Dennis was telling them about the other day that grew up in the wild and killed wolves with their bare hands and founded Rome.

‘Up, up,’ he nudges, tapping at Dennis’s legs until Dennis gets the picture and swings them onto the bed, shuffling back until he’s squarely under the covers. He lies straight with his eyes closed like a corpse on a mortuary slab, apparently forgetting Mac is even there until Mac taps on his shoulder. He cracks one eye open.

‘What?’ he croaks.

‘You can’t sleep in your shirt, dude, it’s all long-sleeved and shit, it’ll be so uncomfortable,’ Mac explains. Dennis narrows his eyes and flips the covers back after a concerted effort from his flailing baby deer limbs. Mac rolls his eyes and grabs his wrists loosely in one hand before Dennis can accidentally hit himself or knock over the water on the nightstand. Dennis goes still in his grip. He looks at Mac with beady, glittering eyes. The fever has heightened their intensity to the point of absurdity; if the big guy upstairs had only thought to fit Dennis with an off switch, you’d have yourself a man-sized flashlight.

‘Why’re you doing this?’ Dennis asks him. His voice is blurry with sickness but the words are sharp.  ‘Why’re you looking after me? It’s weird, you’re – _weird_ , Mac, doing all this stuff for me.’

His eyes are way too piercing for someone this out of it. They’re probably just sharp and sparkling like that with the fever, and Dennis won’t even remember saying all this in the morning. Mac could say anything he wants and Dennis wouldn’t even remember.

Still. Better to be on the safe side.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,’ Mac says firmly. He tugs at Dennis’s sleeves until Dennis makes a grumbling noise and sits up, lets it be stripped off him. He flops back down instantly, glaring up at Mac from the pillow with his curls in a wild stir, sticking out from his head. He looks like a dumbass.

‘You look like a dumbass,’ Mac tells him. It’s important that Dennis knows this.

‘The Mother Theresa look doesn’t suit you,’ Dennis continues, ignoring Mac’s skilful attempts at deflection. ‘Come on, man, what are you up to? Don’t think I haven’t noticed all the weird shit you’ve been doing lately. Muffins? The lunches in the fridge? _Thunder Gun Goes Nuclear_? What’s going on?’

His voice is so hoarse it lends the questions a pleading quality, which isn’t playing fair at all. Mac’s had a lifetime of conditioning instructing him in how to respond to Dennis in need: that waver in his voice, the confused furrow of his brow. They’ve got a good system going here, where Mac leaves Dennis’s lunches in the fridge and picks up extra Alka-Seltzer when Dennis’s stomach gets sore and reminds him to take his meds and doesn’t ask for one single goddamn thing in return except that they never, ever talk about it. Dennis grumbles and sighs and generally acts like being taken care of is a gigantic chore, but there’s a new and genuine curiosity in his voice now, even thick with sickness, that’s making Mac uneasy. He’s never made Mac _talk_ about it before. Dennis is breaking the rules right now, and he’s doing it with puppy dog eyes.

But Mac doesn’t need to feel guilty, because he actually _is_ helping Dennis right now already, so – no. Not today. He throws Dennis’s gross shirt in the laundry basket, avoiding Dennis’s eyes.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,’ he says, injecting a shit ton of fake cheeriness into his voice. That’s bound to make Dennis crazy. See how he likes it. ‘You should sleep, but I’ll make you some soup later. I think we got a tin of Campbell’s from like, this century around here.’

‘See!’ Dennis crows, sitting up and then making a face like he’s about to hurl. Mac bounds back across the room and hastily lowers him back down with one hand on his shoulder and one on his lower back. Dennis coughs weakly, his hands clutching at Mac’s biceps. He’s so sallow he looks like one of those freakish chicks in old timey British TV dramas who loom at windows and never go outside.

‘Dude, you’re sweating so much, it’s totally gross,’ Mac complains, wiping his hand on his jeans and grimacing.

‘ _You’re_ sweating so much,’ Dennis says rudely and coughs again, still out of breath from his exciting foray into sitting upright. 

Mac rolls his eyes and carefully detaches himself from Dennis’s feeble grip. Dennis bitches under his breath but lets him go, still watching him with narrowed eyes. Mac picks up the shoes and keys and stuff scattered on the floor so Dennis doesn’t trip if he does something stupid and tries to get up. Dee’s going to rage at him for letting Dennis sleep in their bed while he’s sick, but what the hell else is he supposed to do? They have _got_ to get their old apartment back somehow.

‘That doesn’t even make sense, bro,’ he points out. ‘Get some sleep.’

‘I’m onto you, Mac!’ Dennis tries to pelt the words at Mac’s back as he leaves the room but his voice is weak and hoarse; the words fall short of their intended target and Mac walks away rolling his eyes. ‘Don’t think I don’t know you’re planning something! Don’t think you can fool the golden god! I won’t stand for it, Mac! Mac, are you listening to me?’

\---

Dennis heals up within a couple of days, but the edge of wariness in his eyes doesn’t dissipate with the sickness. He seems determined to catch Mac in the act, whatever act that is: he keeps popping up like a jack-in-the-box when Mac least expects it, like when he’s at the Wawa stocking up on hair gel.

‘Jesus Christ, Dennis,’ he hisses, clutching madly at the bottles in his arms so they don’t scatter all over the floor. Dennis arches an eyebrow at him.

‘Stocking up on gel, huh,’ he asks, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Yes,’ Mac says slowly, brows drawing together in confusion. This seems like the wrong answer, but he can’t think what the right one would be. Dennis is staring at him so intently that Mac’s face is beginning to itch. ‘Have I got something on my face, dude?’

‘No,’ Dennis says, rolling his eyes. ‘I’m doing a thing, it’s – I’m intimidating you, dude, keep up. It’s a whole –’

He pauses, gaze snags on something behind Mac’s head. He unfolds his arms and points, looking a little sheepish. ‘Actually, I’m running low on – can you –’

Mac sighs and turns around to face the lip balm display. He plucks a cherry chapstick off the shelf and hands it over to Dennis without comment. Dennis coughs.

‘Thanks, bro,’ he says. He frowns, tapping the chapstick against the palm of his hand in an irritated rhythm. ‘Kinda ruined the whole intimidation thing, huh?’

‘Yeah, kinda,’ Mac commiserates. He gestures around at the rest of the shelves with his one free hand. ‘You need anything else?’

‘Well, while we’re here,’ Dennis starts, which is how they end up in front of the cashier half an hour later with armfuls of hair gel, cup noodles, lip balm, a bottle of lube, beef jerky, kitchen towel and, on Mac’s insistence, three packs of Red Vines. He can usually persuade Dennis to eat those when he’s feeling cagey, on account of a loophole in the packaging that makes it sound like they’re low in calories (they’re not).

‘We should’ve just gotten a basket, dude. We do this like, every time we come here.’

‘You saying you can’t carry all this, Mac? I thought you were stronger than that.’

Mac makes an indignant noise and dumps the stuff on the counter, glaring at Dennis, who smirks and folds his arms across his chest again. He clearly thinks that’s a good look, with the way he’s got his shirtsleeves rolled up even though it’s freezing outside, just so he can show off the muscles in his forearms. _And_ he’s wearing the blue shirt that exactly matches the shade of his eyes. Who takes that long to think about what they’re wearing in the morning? Jesus Christ. It really makes Mac want to knock him off his perch, rough him up a little. Mess up those perfectly coiffed curls. 

Mac opens his mouth to object to Dennis’s attack on his superior strength and stamina when the Wawa clerk interrupts.

‘Wow, got a lot of stuff here,’ she says cheerily. ‘I’m Samantha. I’m new here, don’t reckon I’ve seen you two around before. Sure are a cute couple,’ she winks as she scans the bottle of lube, so jaunty Mac wonders if she knows she’s in Philadelphia and not on Broadway.

Mac and Dennis turn to stare at her in unison.

‘Who the fuck asked you?’ Dennis replies, indignant. The folded arms thing really does work with that tone of voice, much as Mac hates to admit it. It’s very ‘may I speak with your manager?’, but in a more masculine, less soccer mom kind of way.

‘Yeah, lady,’ Mac tacks on, puffing his chest up and clenching his fists at his sides. ‘And why would you assume we’re gay?’

‘That’s a good point, Mac,’ Dennis says, still glaring at Samantha. ‘Even if we _were_ a couple, what gives you the impression we’d like to hear _your_ input on that? Our private business is our private business _, Samantha.’_

‘I didn’t,’ she stammers, hands frozen on the bottle, horrified. ‘I didn’t mean –’

‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Dennis says, oozing charm now as he leans over and prizes the bottle out of her hands, shoving it into the bag with the rest of their stuff. ‘But maybe think next time before you make random assumptions about two very pleasant, very cordial strangers who come into your store to stock up on jerky and water-based lubricant.’

‘Just two guys living together and picking up some groceries,’ Mac interjects, leaning over Dennis’s shoulder and scowling for emphasis. ‘Nothing sexual about that, Samantha.’

‘Nothing sexual at all,’ Dennis agrees, turning to smile at Mac briefly over his shoulder. He turns back to Samantha, sorrowful smirk spreading across his face. ‘You really should think about expanding your mind before you start judging others. Take a look at yourself, Samantha. Take a look at your _self_.’

Mac crows at that, catching Dennis in a high five as they turn triumphantly away and start heading towards the doors.

‘But you didn’t – you didn’t pay …’ Mac hears Samantha trailing off bleakly as they walk away.

‘Free groceries, alright!’ Mac whoops as they make it to the car and dump the bags in the back seat.

‘Free groceries, baby,’ Dennis grins at him, sliding into the driver’s seat. He’s clearly forgotten he was mad at Mac in the first place. ‘It’s gonna be a good day.’

Dennis’s problem, Mac thinks as he listens to Dennis humming to Bryan Adams and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, is that he can’t just accept someone doing something nice for him without strings attached. He talks a good game about how everyone should worship at the feet of the golden god but worship doesn’t amount to the same thing as care, not really, not at all. You worship things you can only view from a distance; you care for what’s right in front of you. No wonder Dennis freaks out the minute anyone gets too close – it’s hard to keep someone at arm’s length when you’ve got your back up against a wall.

\---

‘So what, you’re saying they’re never going to get them together?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, sis. That’s like the whole point. Once they’re together, all the tension’s gone, and they’d just have to break them up again for drama, or people’ll stop watching.’

‘No one wants to watch a show about people who’re happy all the time,’ Frank chimes in, and they all nod thoughtfully.

‘ _Friends,_ ’ Mac points out, taking a swig of his beer. ‘Those dumb bitches are always smiling.’

‘Yeah, because they live in a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan in the nineties,’ Dee snorts. Mac clinks their bottles together in agreement.

‘But that just proves my point,’ Dennis argues. He’s really getting into it now, rolling his sleeves up his forearms and leaning across the bar to make his point, fire in his eyes. ‘Ross and Rachel got together and broke up and got back together and broke up, and then got back together in the last episode. They couldn’t keep them together and still have a show. The whole thing rested on the tension between whether or not they were gonna end up together.’

‘How much _Friends_ have you watched, dude,’ Charlie asks, and Mac laughs on a mouthful of beer, snorting bubbles up his nose and coughing. Charlie grins at him. Dennis frowns and raises his hands at them, that one like he’s trying to coax a recalcitrant horse. Mac always found that one funny. It was like Dennis’s hands were saying _what gives? Why’re you making fun of me?_ Which really only made Mac want to make fun of him harder.

‘Not the point, Charlie. Everyone knows about Ross and Rachel anyway, you don’t even need to have –’

‘Alright, I’ll give you Ross and Rachel,’ Dee says, leaning forward with a gleam in her eye. ‘But what about Chandler and Monica.’

Dennis opens his mouth and shuts it again.

‘They’re pretty happy,’ Dee goes on, warming to her theme, gesticulating with her beer. ‘They don’t break up, not even a little bit.’

‘That’s a good point,’ Mac nods slowly, thinking about it. ‘They get together like, what? Halfway through? And then they just … stay happy, stay together. They never break up, they don’t cheat, they don’t fight.’

‘ _So_ unrealistic,’ Dee says, rolling her eyes.

‘Yeah, it’d never happen in real life, but in the _show,_ they stick at it,’ Mac says, getting into it now. ‘They’re happy, they work at their relationship –’

‘They don’t _work_ at it,’ Dennis interrupts, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his searchlight stare on Mac. ‘They never have to. The writers never insert any sources of conflict into their relationship, they’ve got a _way_ easier ride. Think about it, dude – they don’t even have to _work_ at being happy together like Ross and Rachel did because, _and,_ aha, here’s the kicker,’ he near-whispers, leaning forward and not so much as blinking as he makes his point punctuating each word stabbing a finger in Mac’s direction, ‘they’re the _beta couple._ ’

‘When did – when have _all of you_ watched so much _Friends?_ ’ Charlie asks in total bewilderment. ‘Who the fuck is Chandler?’

‘Explain,’ Mac commands, pointing a returning finger. Dennis smirks at him.

‘Ross and Rachel are the alpha couple, the will-they-won’t-they, the love story for the ages, the big grand romantic arc, right?’

‘Well …’

‘Just go with it,’ Dennis snaps.

‘Fine, fine, love story for the ages.’

‘And Monica and Chandler _aren’t._ They don’t have the will-they-won’t-they factor, because the whole thing just comes out of fucking nowhere –’

‘At Ross’s wedding to Emily in London, right,’ Mac nods, remembering. He’s thinking maybe they should go and get the flipchart out of the back office. This feels like a flipchart kind of situation.

‘Who the fuck is Emily?’ Charlie asks loudly.

‘Right,’ Dennis continues as if Charlie hadn’t spoken, his eyes darting between Dee and Mac. ‘There’s never any warning, so the audience isn’t invested at all. And then there wouldn’t be a backlash if people didn’t like it and in the next season they had to take it back.’

‘The whole thing is like zero pressure,’ Mac muses. ‘Yeah, I can see that.’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis grins at him. ‘So they’re not a legit example of what we’re talking about, you see? They’re the cozy couple, the comfy couple – the one you don’t really care about. Like a nice lamp. It’s nice to see it there, but you’re not going to cry about it if someone moved it.’

‘I don’t want people moving my shit,’ Dee says seriously. ‘Obviously I wouldn’t cry about it, but someone starts moving your stuff around, that can get messy fast. Like, where’s the line, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie chimes in. ‘Don’t move my lamp, dude.’

‘It’s a metaphor,’ Dennis grits out. Mac pats his hand consolingly. Dennis’s eyes flicker down to it then up to Mac, briefly startled, the static in his expression fizzling out. He redirects his gaze to Charlie and Dee, half-frowning. ‘I meant – I meant that they’re not like a will-they-won’t-they couple because the value of their relationship in the show isn’t a source of tension, it’s a source of –’

‘Comfort,’ Mac finishes, and Dennis looks back at him, freed from whatever word soup he was getting lost in. He nods shortly, taking a sharp, quick pull on his beer.

‘Yeah,’ he says, his voice quiet and suddenly subdued.

Mac waits, but nothing else is forthcoming, and without Dee and Charlie butting in, the whole exchange takes on a weight Mac hadn’t intended it to have. He clears his throat and pulls his hand away from Dennis’s, chuckling as if he only just realised he’d left it there. He sneaks a look in Charlie and Dee’s direction to see if they noticed and he catches the tail-end of a glance between the two of them – raised eyebrows, half-rolled eyes before they go back to their beers, synced up and smooth, with all the familiarity of a routine exchange.

What the hell is that about?

‘That’s not to say that will-they-won’t-they can’t be comforting in itself, though,’ Dennis says in an odd tone of voice. Mac turns back to him and finds Dennis watching him with an unusually intent expression. The gleam in his eye reminds Mac of water cutting through an oil spill; that rainbow glare, sharp and bright and just over the edge into too much.

‘What?’ Mac asks.

Dennis clears his throat, settling back into his persuasive stance. Mac shifts in his seat a little, nervous anticipation prickling along the underside of his thighs. Dennis isn’t even pretending to include Dee and Charlie anymore, or even Frank, who honestly is probably asleep at this point in the conversation. He’s just looking at Mac, all his attention focused on him and it’s – it’s a lot. A lot of focus to be balled up and thrown in Mac’s direction like that.

‘Sometimes audiences go for so long watching a couple dance around each other, wondering if they’re going to get together, that the uncertainty itself becomes a kind of comfort,’ Dennis says. His voice is calm and even, a still water underneath which runs something dangerous. ‘It becomes a staple of the show, like a running joke or a familiar set.’

‘Right,’ Mac agrees nervously. He notices his hands twisting the beer bottle, pulling at the label and stops them abruptly. He flattens them against the bar, gaze fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Dennis’s lower lip. He clears his throat. Charlie and Dee are still watching in this weirdly charged silence, like at some point Mac and Dennis became the entertainment. ‘It’s like a part of their characters?’

‘Exactly,’ Dennis says, so low it’s a near-hiss. ‘And then what do you do with the characters if they finally do get together? Who would they even be after that, if their whole dynamic is built around unresolved romantic tension?’

Mac frowns.

‘You’d just get them together right at the end,’ he argues, not sure why Dennis isn’t understanding this. ‘Then you don’t have to lose any of the tension or the comfort or whatever it is, you can just bang ‘em together in the last episode and the audience get their closure, the writers don’t have to fuck around with it, everyone gets what they want.’

‘Everyone goes home happy,’ Dennis says evenly. Mac hesitates, not sure what to say. That one vein in Dennis’s forehead that always jumps out ahead of an explosion is making a star appearance.

‘Yeah, dude.’

‘Hmm,’ Dennis says, propping his chin on the bar with one hand, mock-contemplative. ‘But what if the writers get tired of doing that dance, Mac? What about the actors, for that matter? What if the goddamn _characters_ get sick of the goddamn dance? What then, huh?’

‘Well the characters aren’t – they aren’t real people, Dennis,’ Mac frowns. He looks round at the others to see if there’s a point to this conversation that he’s missing, but Charlie and Dee refuse to make eye contact – they’re staring real hard into their beers as if they hold the secrets to life, the universe and everything. Dee’s eyebrows are halfway up her forehead.

Mac looks back at Dennis, whose mouth has receded into a thin, flat line. His hands are bunched into fists at his sides. Mac shrugs his shoulders helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, dude, I don’t get it –’

‘What if they get sick of the will-they-won’t-they before the end, Mac?’ Dennis spits out through gritted teeth. ‘What if they can’t fucking _take it anymore_ and he won’t make a fucking move and they can’t fucking take it? What if they just have to make a change?’

‘The actors or the –’

‘ _It doesn’t fucking matter, Mac.’_

‘I don’t know, Dennis, I guess they leave!’ Mac half-shouts, bewildered and angry in his bewilderment.

The words land on Dennis like a lead weight, flattening the tension in his features until they’re blank and smooth. Mac tracks the rapid flutter of Dennis’s eyelashes as he blinks and blinks. Is that a smear of mascara running under his eyes? Mac’s hands are shaking, flat against the bar. His heart is thumping painfully and he just wants Dennis to stop looking at him like that, like he’s nothing, like he’s worse than nothing.

‘They leave, huh,’ he asks neutrally, like Mac asked him for the time. Although that’s not a good comparison, because last week when Mac actually asked him for the time Dennis told him it was time he got a watch and laughed his ass off about it all the way to the goddamn car, as if that wasn’t a joke that went out of fashion when they were in grade school.

‘Yeah, Dennis, they leave,’ Mac bites out. ‘Isn’t that what anyone does when they’re not getting what they want?’

It sounds – it’s too harsh, too mean for the look on Dennis’s face right now and Mac wants to take it back as soon as he says it. But only for a second. Then he forces it down, makes himself chew on it despite the twisting in his gut. This is how things are; Dennis has said worse to him. Dennis has said all kinds of things to him. He didn’t – they’re talking about a goddamn TV show. Dennis has said worse.

‘And on that note,’ Dee says, too loudly in the shaky silence of the bar. She puffs out her cheeks as she slides off the barstool, eyes wide and cheeks pinking with something that looks like the hands-off, too many feelings flying around kind of expression she used to get around Cricket, when he was still in love with her. Charlie starts to do the same, muttering something about checking his glue traps. ‘I think that’s my cue to leave.’

‘It’s nobody’s cue to leave,’ Mac says, frowning in confusion. ‘We weren’t talking about you, Dee. No one cares if you’re here or not.’

Dennis gives a quiet snort as if he just can’t help it, and Mac swivels back to look at him quickly. But it’s gone before he gets there. Dennis is studying the woodgrain of the bar with that curious intensity, leaning forward on braced hands. Mac fights the bizarre urge to put his hand back on Dennis’s; if there’s one thing that wouldn’t help in this situation, it is absolutely, definitely Mac touching him.

Frank’s long, low whistling snore is ten times more noticeable once Dee and Charlie have made their exit, and it’s just him, Dennis and Mac’s roiling insides left alone in the bar. Mac tosses around several variations on the question in his head before the tightening grip of Dennis’s hands on the bar top tells him Dennis knows he’s hesitating, and to ask the goddamn question sometime this century.

‘Are you okay, dude?’ he asks.

Dennis looks up at him and – nothing. Nothing there. Perfectly pleasant. Smiling and blank and empty, like that first week in suburbia all over again.

‘I’m fine, Mac,’ he says, eyes blinking dewily. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

\---

It’s a weird week.

Dennis continues to tell Mac that he’s fine, but there’s definitely something brewing under the surface that he refuses to discuss. He doesn’t avoid Mac, but he stops following him around. He’s eerily quiet the whole week, watching Mac contemplatively for minutes at a time as if Mac is a national monument and he’s an out of town tourist, and he doesn’t bat an eye when Mac tries to out-stare him. He doesn’t even freak out when Mac screws up the mixer order and five hundred cases of boxed orange juice turn up on their doorstep instead of fifty. At the end of that whole debacle, after the police have taken Cricket away and Dee is mixing them mimosas behind the bar accompanied by Charlie’s belligerent coaching, Dennis only sighs and wordlessly hands him a beer. Mac is _this close_ to throwing his hands up and just provoking a fight out of frustration.

The most concrete evidence he has that something’s off is the touching thing.

‘There’s literally no way we would ever have agreed to that,’ Dennis says, half-laughing and leaning back against the bar while Dee scowls. ‘Why would we ever have told you that, Dee?’

‘Because it’s – because I’m going to be in a movie!’ Dee says, looking between them with that familiar, half-desperate light in her eyes. ‘A real movie! That’s being filmed in Philly! And you promised you’d come and support me on-set. I have written proof!’

She jabs at her smart phone. They squint in unison.

‘What?’ Dennis demands. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at here?’

‘The group chat,’ Dee gets out through gritted teeth, ‘where you guys sent firework emojis and said you’d come and support me after I told you about getting the part!’

‘Charlie sent the fireworks,’ Mac nods, remembering, and Charlie throws him some finger guns, ‘but I don’t –’

‘I don’t remember typing that, do you?’ Dennis turns to Mac questioningly. Mac shakes his head.

‘I don’t think so, Dee,’ Mac says. ‘See, we already tried the screenwriting angle, and it didn’t work out for us. I’m not into it, I don’t want to go that way again. It changed us.’

‘I do feel like it changed us,’ Charlies agrees.

‘Took us in a weird direction,’ Dennis nods. ‘Screenwriting isn’t for us, sis.’

‘That’s fine, Dennis, because we’re not talking about you,’ Dee glares. ‘We’re talking about me, and my _speaking role_ in a real-life, totally legitimate historical drama set in our actual goddamn city.’

‘Hold up, hold up,’ Charlie says, clearly intrigued, motioning with one hand for Dee to shut up. ‘Historical, you say?’

‘Yeah,’ Dee says warily.

Charlie strokes his stubble, cocking one eyebrow.

‘Probably got some horse and carriage shit going on there. You think there are gonna be horses on set?’

‘Well, yeah, probably,’ Dee says. ‘I mean, they had horses back in, uh, whenever the movie’s set so, I guess.’

Her eyes widen at the implication as soon as she finishes speaking, and she shoots out a hand in protest.

‘No, no, no, you are not coming on set just to get all weird with the horses, Charlie.’

‘Um, you’re the one that invited us onto the set, Dee,’ Charlie frowns, shrugging at Mac and Dennis. ‘What do you say, guys? Wanna go on a horse trip?’

‘It’s not a _horse trip_ ,’ Dee emphasises. ‘It’s a – oh, forget it.’

Mac and Dennis exchange a glance.

‘I think we’re good, bro,’ Dennis says, smirking slightly. ‘We’ve got our own plans.’

Mac grins a little, a little bounce in his chest at the thought: it’s monthly dinner day.

‘Uh huh,’ Charlie nods, eyebrows raised. ‘Sure you do.’

‘What?’ Mac frowns at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Charlie shrugs and takes a sip of his beer, avoiding Mac’s eyes.

‘Why did I fall for it,’ Dee asks, apparently talking aloud to herself. ‘Why did I take written confirmation as proof?’

‘To be honest, I didn’t even know you were a part of that chat, Dee,’ Dennis confesses. ‘Totally passed me by.’

‘I can understand that, Dennis, seeing as how most of the chat is just you and Mac texting each other pictures of the dong shot from _Thunder Gun Express_ ,’ Dee snaps.

‘It’s not _texting_ when it’s in the group chat, Dee. It’s _messaging._ ’

Dee blinks at them in disbelief.

‘That’s it?’ she presses. ‘That’s your response?’

‘What else is there to say, Dee?’ Mac frowns. He glances at Dennis, who shrugs. He’s about to complain about how the pictures are actually from _Thunder Gun Express: Director’s Cut,_ theatrical release 2010, and if Dee had an artistic bone in her body then she’d know that, but then Dennis leans back against the bar and reaches over Mac’s shoulder to retrieve his forgotten beer, lunging right into Mac’s personal space. His bare arm brushes Mac’s skin where his shirt doesn’t quite reach, and Mac’s words get stuck in his throat.

Dennis’s eyes flick to him suddenly, when they’re at the closest possible point, so they’re watching each other at the exact moment when their skin touches, and a zip of static passes through them both. Dennis shivers, blinking rapidly, but he doesn’t look away. He looks almost surprised to find that they’re still so close, but there’s no way he can be as surprised as Mac.

‘Um,’ Mac says, or thinks he says. His lips feel kind of numb. ‘You okay there, Dennis?’

‘I’m fine, Mac, thank you for asking,’ Dennis says very evenly. ‘Just trying to reach my beer there. Uh. How are you?’

‘I’m great, Dennis. How are you?’

‘I’m –’

‘I for one am doing _great,’_ says Charlie very loudly, from somewhere behind Mac, which might as well be a thousand miles away. Whatever’s happening here, it definitely shouldn’t be happening in the same room as three other people. What the hell _is_ happening here? Why is Dennis still staring at him like that? Why hasn’t he moved away? Mac’s entire body feels like one tensed up muscle. If he could somehow stay this close to Dennis while simultaneously teleporting across town, that would be great.

‘Good to know, Charlie,’ Mac’s mouth says, moving without his permission. His brain has shorted out. Dennis’ body heat is seeping into him from just that one point of contact, his arm and Mac’s shoulder. Their faces are insanely close together and Dennis’s eyes are so, so blue. Mac’s gaze flicks down to his mouth and he _hears_ Dennis take a wavering breath.

And then – something shifts. Awareness floods Dennis’s expression; embarrassment, maybe. He draws back sharply then clutches the seat of the stool with white-knuckled fingers, like he needs the support to balance. Mac doesn’t say or do a single thing, just sits, rooted to the spot. His heart is hammering a mile a minute; Dee’s watching him with raised eyebrows as if she can hear it.

He shakes himself free of the moment, taking a long swig of beer to cover the way he’s flushing, and silently, fervently thanks God for the existence of alcohol.

‘Anyway,’ Charlie says, drawing the word out like toffee. ‘I’m gonna go and do that, uh – that thing I had to go and do.’

Mac blinks at him.

‘Yeah,’ Dee adds quickly, ‘I think I’m gonna – go and help Charlie with that.’

They empty out like there’s a fire in the back and then it’s just Mac and Dennis alone, studiously not looking at each other, sat in stifling silence.

Dennis’s throat clicks as he swallows. Mac coughs, one hand uncomfortably massaging the back of his neck.

After a minute, he clears his throat.

‘Wanna go get high and egg Dee’s car?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ Dennis says immediately, and they slide off their stools in unison. Mac is careful their hands don’t brush as they go. 

\---

God doesn’t have any answers for Mac on Sunday, but Mac’s pretty used to that by now. Honestly, he’d probably be more surprised if one day he actually got a response while praying. He used to wonder what that would look like – an angel popping into existence right in front of him, or if God would just speak directly into his head or something, but now he wonders whether they’re keeping up with technological advances upstairs. How cool would it be to get a WhatsApp message straight from Jesus? It’d save him a hell of a lot of teleportation time.

Mac’s so busy thinking this through, sensing the foundations of a scam in the idea, that he nearly walks right past Dennis on his way out of church.

‘Dude! C’mon, you’re gonna walk right past me?’

‘Huh?’

Mac turns to see Dennis leaning against the church steps, sunglasses on and still needlessly shading his eyes like an asshole.

‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he smirks, as if he didn’t wave Mac out the door just a few hours ago. 

Mac rolls his eyes, dragging his feet as he retraces his steps. Dennis giving him shit about God is easily one of his least preferred ways of spending a Sunday. Dennis always wants to make it a big issue about how subscribing to religion doesn’t make sense, and how is Mac supposed to fight him on that when he’s always been taught that it doesn’t have to? You just do your bit for God and get on with it, and don’t worry about whether it all makes sense or not, because that’s for brains bigger and holier than yours.

‘What are you doing here, dude? You shouldn’t pick up chicks on the steps of God’s house, we’ve had this conversation a million times.’

‘I’m not here for that, Mac.’

‘Then what’s up?’

Dennis looks off down the street and back at Mac, scratching the back of his neck. If Mac didn’t know better, he’d say Dennis was nervous. But what would he have to be nervous about? There aren’t even any chicks around.

His smile is cautious, almost skittish as he unfurls his empty palms. _Nothing to see here, officer_.

‘I was just passing by.’

‘Are you following me again?’ Mac squints at him, trying to gauge the twist of his mouth, whether his flushed cheeks are from the sun or an impending freak-out. It’s hard to get a read on Dennis when he wears those dumb aviators. It always reminds Mac how much he relies on Dennis’s eyes to figure out what Dennis is thinking, although even that’s been tough to figure out lately, what with Dennis always watching Mac between narrowed eyelids like a snake poised to strike. ‘Dude, that’s not cool. What if you came up behind me and tapped my shoulder and I popped you a good one like I did to Dee that one time on Christmas? I don’t wanna do that to you, Dennis, but you know it’s just a reflex when you’re as well-trained as I am.’

‘Well, that’s not going to happen, Mac, seeing as I’m not stupid enough to approach you from behind,’ Dennis snaps. ‘And also, if I was following you, why would I tap you on the shoulder? That’s the exact opposite of stealth.’

‘For the reveal moment, duh.’

‘What are you talking about, what reveal moment?’

‘The moment when you come up to me all smug because you figured out what I’m up to, so you don’t need to follow me anymore. That’s how it always goes in the movies.’

‘Well, we’re not in the movies, alright, Mac, and I just want to have one goddamn conversation where we don’t –’

Dennis cuts himself off, closing his eyes and visibly counting to ten. He sighs and yanks off his sunglasses to look at Mac.

‘Look, I don’t want to fight, okay? I just want to talk.’

‘Okay,’ Mac says dubiously. ‘Go ahead, man.’

Dennis looks off down the street again and Mac cranes his head to see what he’s looking at, but there’s nothing down there. When he turns his head back around Dennis is watching him with that almost-hesitation from before.

‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he says. He rummages around in his pocket and pulls out an index card, waving it in Mac’s general direction. ‘I know things have been kind of weird with us lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about it. Now I know this is like, the total opposite of how either of us would usually do things but stay with me, here, okay? I’ve put together a couple of talking points just to guide us through it. I know it sounds kind of lame, but I want you to stay with me on this, because I think it could work out really well for us, okay? You with me, buddy?’

‘Okay,’ Mac says again, a little impatient this time. He can’t stop staring at the index card, wondering what’s on the other side of it. This better not be a plan to scam free snacks at the movie theatre or something. He folds his arms across his chest. ‘What is it?’

Dennis clears his throat delicately.

‘Why do you come here?’ he asks, reading each word carefully off the card as if there’s a danger Mac might not understand if he speaks too fast. When he’s finished he gives Mac a smug grin, clearly proud of himself.

Mac groans, disappointment pulling his whole body down.

‘What’s this got to do with us, Dennis? I don’t want to have the ‘religion is stupid’ discussion again, bro. I just get angry and you get all frustrated with me and we _never_ agree on who wins –’

‘Jesus Christ, I’m not – I mean I would obviously win that discussion, because I win it every goddamn time, Mac, but that’s not the point here. Trust me when I say this is all gonna make sense, I promise. I already said I don’t want to fight, okay? And I meant it. I really don’t want to fight.’

Dennis looks at him pleadingly. His nose is definitely reddening in the sun. It’s not like him to step outside the apartment without slapping factor 50 all over his face to protect his precious complexion; he must have been in a real hurry when he left. 

‘There. Does this look like the face of a man who wants to fight?’

He gives Mac a big cheesy grin.

‘No,’ Mac concedes reluctantly. It looks like the face of a man who’s going to be squawking like a parrot when he catches sight of his reflection in about an hour, but Mac keeps that to himself.

‘Okay then. So, maybe now you can answer my question. Humour me.’

Mac sighs, looking down at the crooked, chipped paving slabs under their feet, toeing a weed shooting up through one of the cracks. He spreads his hands wide and looks back up at Dennis, squinting in the sun.

‘I don’t know, dude. I’ve been going here my whole life. I don’t know what I’d do on a Sunday if I didn’t go to church.’

Dennis rolls his eyes.

‘I’ve seen you passed out for entire Sundays like, a million times, dude.’

‘Okay, when I’m sober then,’ Mac retorts. ‘When I’m capable of it. When I can fucking _walk,_ Dennis. And I do mostly drag myself out even when I’m hungover as shit, if you recall.’

Dennis purses his lips but doesn’t say anything, clearly waiting for Mac to expand on his point. How is Mac supposed to explain this to someone who doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see, and even then reserves judgment until he can make it fit to his own weird personalised set of specifications? Dennis never met a firm statement of belief he didn’t at least _try_ to wear down to a maybe; it’s probably a miracle in and of itself that they’ve lived together for so long and he hasn’t converted Mac to atheism through sheer force of will. Mac gives himself a mental pat on the back for being the immovable object to Dennis’s unstoppable force.

He casts a glance across the street searching for a sign, and his eye catches on the old Vietnamese lady going into the laundromat. He points, a bolt of inspiration striking him.

‘Like, look at that old lady, bro. She comes to do her laundry across the street there like _every_ Sunday. I’ve been watching her do it since I was a kid!’

He smiles at Dennis expectantly, but Dennis just watches the door close behind the woman and looks back at Mac, frown wrinkling his brow.

‘You going to church is like that old lady doing her laundry?’ he says doubtfully. ‘That’s just sad, dude. I don’t understand the appeal of that at all.’

Mac sighs, clapping his hands together in front of Dennis and wringing them.

‘No, dude, it’s like – this is where God wants me to be, you know? Like He wants that old lady to do her laundry every Sunday at the same time, or He wouldn’t put her there every week. God wants me to be here, that’s what the Bible says. You gotta show up, man.’

‘You think God personally wants you to be here?’ Dennis squints at him sceptically. ‘He sits down every week with a big bowl of popcorn and thinks ‘gee, I sure hope Mac makes it to church this week just like he does every other week, because that shit’s better than Netflix’?’

‘Not _exactly_ like that – of course God wouldn’t eat popcorn, Dennis, that’s just empty calories. But kind of. I mean, I’m here because He commands it. Everything’s dictated by the big man upstairs, Dennis. Why else would anything happen?’

‘Because people are people, and – no. Wait. That’s not the discussion we’re having here, we’re getting off track,’ Dennis interrupts himself, blowing out a long, exasperated breath. He braces himself on Mac’s shoulder with one hand, nearly folding the index card in two. He massages his temples, watching Mac with steely determination. Mac blinks at him, a little startled at the intensity. Has Dennis ever tried so hard to understand this before? Mac pictures the dozens of alternate universes where during the course of this conversation, Dennis has already thrown up his hands in frustration and walked away. They call it irreconcilable differences, don’t they?

In all the universes except for this one, apparently.

Mac pats Dennis’s hand where it’s scrunching up his shirt sleeve.

‘You got this, buddy,’ he says, and Dennis snorts.

‘Christ. Okay. So, God wants you to be here. It makes God’s Sunday every time you show up. He’s doing cartwheels up there. But what about _you_ , Mac?’

Dennis’s eyes have narrowed in the way that means he thinks he’s being sly.

‘What about me?’

‘Do you want to be here? Does it make you happy, being here?’

Mac blinks at him. This is it? This is Dennis’s play? Mac’s weathered stronger temptation to quit church while he was actually _sitting in church_.

‘Happiness isn’t the point, Dennis. It doesn’t matter if I’m happy to be here or not. I’m here to be reminded of how things are, and how they should be, and if I’m doing stuff good and if not, then how I can do it more better.’

‘But if it’s not – it’s not letting you be –’ Dennis casts off Mac’s shoulder, bracing a hand on his hip. ‘Jesus Christ, this isn’t even like talking to a brick wall, it’s like trying to _scale_ one – which, before you interrupt, you absolutely do not have the core strength to accomplish, Mac, so don’t even try to argue with me.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ Mac lies, glaring from under his eyelashes. Dennis huffs out a breath that could almost have been a laugh and licks his lips, bites down like he does when he’s concentrating on how to make a point. His lower lip fills up dark pink under the pressure, sore-looking and dry in the sun. He must have forgotten his chapstick, too.

‘What I’m saying is,’ Dennis starts slowly, and something twinges in Mac’s stomach; the nausea before the drop on a rollercoaster, ‘if you stopped coming to church, wouldn’t that be because God wanted you to, then? If everything only happens because He dictates it?’

Mac squints.

‘Doesn’t work like that, Dennis. God would never want me to stop coming to church.’

‘But then don’t you see how flawed that logic is?’ Dennis asks him, and his voice is almost pleading now, all traces of cunning wiped from his face. It’s jarring to see Dennis looking at him like that, without the implicit threat of encroaching rage or the knowing smirk of manipulation. It’s not a joke, it’s not a scam – Dennis is really asking him. He really wants to know. ‘It’s so circular, like – God dictates everything, so everything happens because he wants it to, so by that logic you can never argue God doesn’t exist because duh! Stuff is happening in the world, and that’s because of God!’

‘Exactly,’ Mac says eagerly. ‘You’re finally getting it, dude! God has a plan for everyone, that’s how this works.’

‘ _No_ ,’ Dennis groans, gesticulating wildly, ‘that’s not what I meant, Mac. Are you even listening to me? I meant – don’t you see how that isn’t a real argument?’

‘It doesn’t have to be an argument,’ Mac frowns. ‘You’re missing the point, Dennis. Faith isn’t about facts, it’s about _feelings_. If I feel it, then no argument on earth is going to convince me otherwise.’

Dennis’s gaze narrows, pins Mac where he stands.

‘So do you?’ he asks, his voice softer again now and all the more dangerous for it. He presses so close that Mac can feel his body heat, his eyes bright and intent. ‘Do you feel it?’

Mac opens his mouth and no sound comes out. He swallows. Dennis watches the movement of his throat like a cat tracking the tiny, fluttering heartbeat of a mouse.

‘Now you’re just trying to trick me,’ Mac says in a small voice. Dennis stares at him, his brow creasing. He takes a hasty step back as Mac’s voice gets louder. ‘That’s what this is all about. I can’t believe I thought you were really – you’re just trying to trick me, Dennis, like you _always_ do when we talk about this –’

‘Jesus Christ, I’m not – I’m _not_ , Mac, I just want – I want to understand, okay? I want to know what keeps you coming here, week after week, when this thing, this whole thing –’ Dennis gestures wildly at the outside of the church, his voice rising enough that people on the other side of the street start to glance over, ‘this _whole thing_ is always telling you you’re wrong, telling you what you want isn’t right. It’s bad for you, Mac! It’s stopping you from getting what you want.’

Mac stares at Dennis, his heart thumping dully, painfully in his chest. Whatever door was opening inside him slams closed, deadbolt sliding shut. His hands curl into fists at his sides.

‘What are you talking about, dude? What do you mean _what I want,_ I don’t –’

‘Fuck,’ Dennis says loudly. He plants his feet solidly on the sidewalk and lifts his hands up to the sky, staring up at the bright spring sun. His face is approaching the mid-range freak-out shade of purple. ‘I tried, my dude. You can’t say I didn’t at least try!’

‘What? Who are you talking to, Dennis?’ Mac snaps, eyeing him warily. Is seeing people in the sky a symptom of BPD? That wasn’t listed when Mac looked it up in the DSM, but maybe there was a more recent edition he was missing. He’ll look it up online later, when Dennis is finished being an asshole.

‘God, of course,’ Dennis barks, gaze shunting back down to Mac. His eyes are red, watery; he shoves his sunglasses back on his nose inelegantly, not bothering to correct them when they fall crookedly to one side. His nostrils are flaring with rage. ‘He’s the one who made you this way, right?’

Mac stares at him, muscles in his palms tensing with something like fear.

‘Made me what way, Dennis?’ he asks, his throat tight. He must have missed a step in the conversation somewhere. That must be it. There’s no way Dennis is out here on a Sunday yelling at him on the steps of a church about – no way. There’s just no way. 

‘ _Into musical theatre_ ,’ Dennis hisses, then barks a horrible laugh at whatever Mac’s face does in response to the words. ‘Both literally _and_ metaphorically! Isn’t that just the icing on the cake? Maybe God thought that was a real funny joke. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Mac. I think God’s got a real shitty sense of humour.’

Mac doesn’t defend God. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there stupid and silent, swallowing his rage while Dennis scoffs in his face one last time and walks away, index card crumpling in his white-knuckled fist.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for the really welcoming response so far! Note that this is where the Explicit rating comes in. Happy Friday ;)

Mac used to talk to God a lot, when he was a little kid. He used to ask him a whole bunch of stuff – not just praying for things but asking real questions, like why was the sky blue and why did girls smell different than boys – but he got out of the habit once he realised God wasn’t real chatty with any answers. He didn’t really deliver on a lot of things in the end, but Mac’s mom always told him that wasn’t the point of religion. It was about following the right path. It was about seeing all the different forks in the road you could take, and knowing which paths had been hand paved by Satan himself, and then picking the right one.

‘How’d you know which one’s the right one though,’ Dee slurs at him, and Mac flaps a hand in her face. She’s still just as chatty when she’s drunk as when she’s sober, even with her face sticking to the table. She’ll have to pry her face free when they drag themselves out of here; this piece of shit bar is even stickier and grimier than Paddy’s, and despite what Charlie would protest, that’s really saying something.

‘Let’s go to a dive,’ he’d said, more like yelled really, when they left the last place. He didn’t want to go anywhere good, he didn’t want to get happy drunk. He wanted _dive_. He wanted dirt, and grime, and to drink so much he couldn’t see.

Dee had whined right into his ear.

‘Cocktails,’ she’d protested. Mac had booed loudly and tried to sling her over his shoulder, at which point she’d capitulated with a shriek. They went to a dive.

‘You _know,_ ’ Mac snorts at her, then breathes out a sad, long sigh through his nose. ‘You always fuckin _know,_ Dee. It’s about avoiding tempt – temp – s’about picking the _right_ path, you see? You gotta pick the right one. And then you don’t go to hell and you get to live in heaven with God and all the super buff angels and cake and stuff.’

‘There’s cake in heaven?’ Dee asks him, raising an eyebrow like if he’s got a roadmap, she’s ready to call up an Uber right this minute.

‘Tons of it,’ Mac confirms. ‘And chimichangas. Like a _fuckton_ of chimichangas.’

They try to high five and miss a couple times. Mac’s hand lands hard on the table in the middle of a puddle of beer.

‘Anyway whatever, that doesn’t answer my question, Macwell,’ Dee intones in her weird fancy lady voice, peering at him over her beer bottle, almost cross-eyed with concentration. She’s probably trying to do one of her characters, only nobody realises that except her, so she just looks fucking stupid. Mac wishes Dennis were here so they could laugh at her together. He wishes it so badly his stomach aches.

‘Does _so_ ,’ Mac insists, leaning back and shutting his eyes, ignoring the way the room spins even worse when they’re closed. ‘Why do girls smell different than boys anyway, Dee? You’re a girl. D’you know why?’

‘Jesus Christ, Mac,’ she says, and she’s nearly yelling now. He can barely hear her over the noise of the bar, with his eyes closed like this. It’s kind of cushiony in here, spinning as he is. ‘Because they shower more than you do, how about that? And they don’t wear the same stupid tank top to the gym and then to work three days in a row.’

‘No,’ he protests, eyes blinking open, shaking his head at Dee until he feels woozy, ‘nope. _Dennis_ showers more’n any girl I’ve ever met. And he always smells flowery and shit, ‘cause of that fruity shower stuff he uses –’

‘ _My_ shower stuff,’ Dee interrupts. Mac aggressively shushes her and she groans.

‘Like I was _saying,_ Dennis isn’t like other girls ‘cause he’s different. ‘Cause of that.’

‘What?’

Mac blinks.

‘Because he, with the. He smells like strawberries,’ too many syllables, ‘ _all_ the time.’

Mac sighs, flicking at a beer mat and accidentally flipping it out of reach across the table. Dee quietly burps.

‘And that one hair thing he uses, it’s. Smells like apple cider,’ he adds. Maybe it’s the tequila blurring the lines between reality and fantasy but suddenly there it is, beaming directly into his mind like a sudden ray of light: Dennis in the shower, beads of water trickling over his shoulders, eyelashes downcast and thickly clumped with wetness, his mouth red from the heat. His skin flushed pink with the steam, hair slick and combed through with conditioner as he tilts his head back, face flat and peaceful as he washes out the product. He wears his bathrobe around the apartment when he gets out of the shower now instead of tying a towel round his waist, ever since Dee told him she saw fat rolls spilling over the top of his jeans. Dennis could have all the fat rolls he wanted. Dennis could have an entire spare tire around his waist and Mac wouldn’t give a shit. Who could?

Dee laughs, high-pitched and sharp like a glass shard to the eardrum and Mac winces, jolting back into reality. The crash of glasses and raucous laughter flood back in; they’re in a bar. They’re in a bar. Dennis isn’t here. Dennis isn’t anywhere Mac knows to look.

‘What the fuck, Dee!’

‘It’s funny ‘cause you don’t even like girls,’ Dee snickers, and Mac rolls his eyes, slumping back down.

‘Duh,’ he says, gesturing in her direction but avoiding her eyes. That fluttery, nauseating sensation has no business invading his gut like this. He came out specifically to avoid it. ‘I don’t like _you_ girls.’

‘What other type of girls are there?’ Dee squints at him.

Mac opens his mouth and shuts it again.

‘Boys! I like boys,’ he says triumphantly, then settles back in his seat, secure in his victory. It must be so embarrassing being Dee, losing arguments all day every day.

Dee just blinks at him, frowning.

‘Boys aren’t a type of girl. They’re just – another type of people.’

‘They’re a type of thing,’ Mac nods at her. ‘An’ they’re the better thing.’

Dee props herself up on one bony hand and closes her eyes.

‘Whatever, Mac. You talk about being gay so much for someone who can’t admit they’re gay,’ she says sleepily.

It’s lucky she’s got her eyes closed so she doesn’t see how Mac’s face crumples before he straightens it out with his last vestiges of muscular control, swiping clumsily at the corners of his eyes. It’s fine, she doesn’t see and so it’s all fine because if there was one person in the entire goddamn world that he doesn’t want to see him breaking down, it’s Dee, which is why it was probably a bad idea for them to go raging together. The drunk is wearing off a little now and he can maybe see that he was making a bad decision there. But she was the only one home when he got back from church. Dennis was gone and Dee was the only one in the apartment, and Charlie wasn’t answering his phone, and so here they are, at fuck o’clock on a Sunday at the only dive bar in South Philly that would let them in.

‘Dee,’ he says. His voice is trembling. The words are jumping straight up his throat from somewhere primal. ‘Dee, I think I fucked up.’

She opens her eyes and looks at him blearily.

‘Wha’?’

‘I think I fucked up,’ he says, louder, and the words land this time. Dee blinks at him with maybe one iota more focus than before. She looks more solid to him right now than usual, despite how the room is spinning. Maybe it’s the weariness in her expression weighing her down, anchoring her to the sticky floor.

‘Yeah, probably,’ she shrugs, gives a weak laugh. ‘It’s what we do, right?’

‘No, not like – I think I fucked up, with Dennis.’

Whatever understanding Dee was extending collapses; she groans and thunks her head down on the table. Mac crouches down near her ear and talks rapidly into it, stumbling over his words.

‘Dee, Dee, listen, I – I was trying to do something nice and it just got all weird, he got all – he got all freaked out and now –’

Dee flaps her hands weakly in his direction and he grabs them easily by the wrists, staring off into the distance. Her hair smells like tequila and pork rinds.

‘And now it’s all weird and he’s mad at me and he wants me to ask God if he likes musical theatre. Dee, I don’t know what to do.’

Dee sighs and turns to face him, blowing some hair out of her face with a belligerent puff.

‘He was a real dick, Dee,’ he says, almost whispering now. ‘You don’t even understand, he was _so_ –’

‘ _I_ don’t understand?’ Dee splutters, and Mac scowls, turning away. ‘You’re telling me I don’t understand Dennis being a dick.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t, Dee,’ he rolls his eyes, slumping back against the side of the booth and ignoring her crazy eyes. ‘You don’t know him like I do.’

Dee’s mouth opens and closes as she turns slowly, powerfully red in the face.

‘Jesus Christ, you know what? I’m over this,’ she snaps, fumbling suddenly for her purse. She whips around to face him, her hair wild and stuck to her lips. When her eyes are wide with rage like this, that’s when she looks most like Dennis. She never had the same talent for rhetoric, though; she always gets stuck in the cursing stage, which just doesn’t have the same effect.

Before Mac can tell her that, she leans in, voice low and mean.

‘You wanna know what I think about your fuck-up, Mac? I think you and Dennis have been dancing around each other for years but you’re too much of a coward to finally make a move, that’s what I think.’

Mac scoffs but it’s unsteady, doesn’t sound as dismissive as it ought. Dee smiles meanly.

‘And I think Dennis is finally getting tired of giving you the run around,’ she gloats. ‘Which is honestly a shame because, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Mac – I think you two deserve each other. I really do.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Mac waves her off as she gives one last dismissive toss of her head and stalks toward the door with a coltish lack of grace, shoving at some unsuspecting bystanders who get in her way. ‘Didn’t need your dumb advice anyway,’ he mumbles to himself, laying his head on the table. He’ll just rest here for a little minute. Just for a minute.

\---

Getting thrown out of a bar whose intended demographic ends about a decade before your age group begins is even more humiliating when you’re doing it alone: Dee refuses to go out raging with him again, so Mac gets used to that particular bar-going experience over the next couple of weeks. He tries to convince himself he gets used to the silence, the empty seat next to him, but framing it as newfound freedom only drives home how much he misses the person who isn’t there. Independence has never been on Mac’s list of desired qualities: even he isn’t that good at self-deception.

When they were younger, Dennis never used to ask him any difficult questions. Dennis used to actively avoid asking Mac anything about what he was feeling, actually, sneering and looking away with a twinge of his eyebrows if it ever came up, like he might catch feelings if he made eye contact. Like he was embarrassed to even be present. Too bad he seems to have gotten over his allergy to them so successfully that he can’t stop himself prodding at Mac’s, even when it’s way over the line.

It’s just so fucking _unfair_. It was so unwarranted, so out of the blue that Mac is still reeling, two weeks later. Bizarre details of it stick and loop in his mind’s eye over and over, a tape he can’t eject: Dennis staring at him, almost pleading, like he really just had to know – like it really meant something to him, to even ask. How hard he was trying to meet Mac in the middle, jaw clamped and face flushing with the effort not to fight. His voice cracking when he shouted _fuck._ The fucking _notecard_.

He’d taken off his sunglasses so he could make eye contact, so he could really look at Mac. So they could really see each other.

No amount of drinking and stumbling home alone can erase it, or stop it, or help Mac figure it out. The worst part is that his drinking buddy is the source of his desire to drink, so he can’t even get blitzed in good company. This is what they _do,_ this is what they should be doing _together_ and instead Dennis is acting like he doesn’t exist, skirting the corner booth where Mac lies hungover with his eyes downcast as if somebody fucking died. It’s the contemptuous curve of his lip that gives him away, though; he can’t quite resist the opportunity to let Mac know how superior he is, even when it ruins the silent treatment act.

It occurs to Mac halfway through the second week of this, right around the time he suspects Dennis has started sleeping in his car, that it’s always in the moments when they’re trying to avoid each other that it becomes obvious exactly how hideously, embarrassingly entwined their lives are. An aerial view of the situation does nothing but emphasise how blurry the dividing lines have become: he trips over Dennis’s flip flops on his way to the shower. He can’t set his head down on the pillow without falling headfirst into the scent of Dennis’s shampoo. They still have _Predator_ Tuesday, for God’s sake – just arriving separately and watching it side by side in icy silence. Mac can’t go five goddamn minutes without remembering something stupid he wanted to tell Dennis, and he’s seen Dennis open his mouth and then shut it again with a click of frustration more times than he can count in the last week.

They pull away and ricochet back to each other like magnets; the problem with knowing Dennis as long as he has is that _he’s known Dennis as long as he has._ No matter how mad they get at each other, he never wants to _stop_ telling Dennis the stupid shit, the little things, even when Dennis is a dick about it. It’s not about Dennis being honest with him or just humouring him; it’s about Dennis sticking around to hear it in the first place. For Mac’s money, being honest isn’t the most important part of being best friends – or whatever the hell they are right now, anyway – by a long shot. It’s whether you still want that person to be there, listening to you talk or talking to you, even when you’re talking about something dumb. He’s never going to be able to wrap up everything about himself and lay it at Dennis’s feet in a big bundle and say _this is it; this is all of it, here I am_. He’s going to keep lying and cheating and saying and doing stupid shit and arguing with Dennis about it until they die, but the point is that Dennis is going to be there for it. That’s what best friends do. Every time Mac reaches out, Dennis is going to be there, sceptical expression pointed right at him. It’s just a done deal.

And Mac really doesn’t want to fuck that up.

‘It’s already fucked up, bro,’ Charlie says, raising his hands like, _duh_. ‘Have you been awake for the last two weeks? Have you been like, present in your life recently?’

Mac lifts his thumping head off the desk with a wince and glares at him.

‘Thanks for the words of encouragement, bro! Knew I could count on you to put things in perspective.’

Charlie rolls his eyes.

‘Okay, a) I already told you I don’t want to hear about your dumb relationship issues, I’m not your goddamn therapist, okay, Mac, and b) don’t ask if you don’t want a real answer.’

Mac screws his face up.

‘Those two things are like, totally contradictory, dude.’

‘Whatever, Mac, not everything makes sense all the time. My point is, you fucked up.’

‘I did not fuck up,’ Mac contests hotly, leaning across the desk and stabbing a finger in Charlie’s direction. ‘Dennis is the one who needs to apologise, Charlie. He totally besmirched my relationship with God, right on the steps of a church and everything.’

‘You fucked up, Dennis fucked up, whatever, who cares,’ Charlie continues loudly, ‘and it’s driving the rest of us insane so c’mon, dude. You gotta pony up. You gotta do something to fix this. Didn’t you have like, a ten-step stalker plan or something? You should get back on that, take him to an apology dinner or something.’

‘It wasn’t a stalker plan,’ Mac mutters, sitting back in his chair with a sigh. ‘It was just – I was just trying to – anyway, it doesn’t matter, it didn’t work.’

‘Well, you better figure something else out, bro, or I’m gonna have to step in.’

Mac laughs. It’s not a happy laugh.

‘What are you gonna do, Charlie? You can’t even win your own arguments, how are you going to fix one of ours?’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Charlie sniffs, steepling his fingers together and staring off into space in the way that means he’s hearing the _Law and Order_ theme tune in his head. ‘I have my ways.’

‘Like what?’ Mac scoffs.

Charlie narrows his eyes.

\---

‘Kidnapping us and locking us in the bar is not a viable solution to this problem, Charlie!’ Mac screams through the door, voice cracking embarrassingly right down the middle. His throat is pretty sore on account of him having been choked out, dumped into the trunk of Dee’s car, and left to resurface on the floor of the deserted bar.

Well – deserted except for Dennis, who looks even more homicidal than Mac feels. He can’t believe Charlie and Dee got the drop on him, even in his weak and perpetually hungover state, and so goddamn _thoroughly_ ; he isn’t going to live this one down for years.  

‘That’s tough shit, Mac, because that’s where we’re at right now, isn’t it?’

Dennis, who’s been sat on his haunches with calm and calculated murder in his eyes ever since they woke up here, finally jolts into action, shuffling up next to Mac in front of the door. His voice comes low and mean when he speaks.

‘You are going to let us out of the bar right now, Charlie, or I swear to _God_ I am going to make you regret it.’

‘I think he means it, dude,’ Mac says after a tense pause. The vein in Dennis’s forehead throbs angrily. Dennis doesn’t even blink.

‘No can do, Mac and Dennis,’ Charlie’s voice comes cheerily. ‘You’re gonna stay in there until you figure your shit out.’

‘What are you talking about, Charlie?’ Dennis asks, each word slow and precise. His eyes flicker to Mac and hold as Charlie’s reply drifts under the door.

‘I’m talking about how we can’t take it anymore, dude,’ he says, voice phasing in and out like it does when he starts making spasmodic hand gestures. Mac can picture it perfectly, just like he can picture punching Charlie in the face right now.

Dee’s voice suddenly pipes up, sounding smug as hell. ‘You assholes need to talk this shit out, okay,’ she tells them, each word dripping with condescension, ‘because we are done listening to you two bitch about each other.’

Mac and Dennis make horrified eye contact at the sound of her voice. Dennis making a silent, pantomime strangling gesture. Mac slams a hand against the wall in frustration. Of course Dee and Charlie teamed up over this. They’re getting to be a little too big for their boots lately; him and Dennis need to do something about it when they get out of here.  

‘Bitch about each other?’ Mac protests, scowling. That’s the last time he asks Dee to go out and rage. ‘We don’t bitch about each other, Dee! I was confiding in you! A good friend wouldn’t throw that back in my face!’

Dennis is hanging his head between his shoulders. He makes a piercingly high-pitched noise like a steam kettle ready to make tea and shoves his mouth as close as possible to a crack in the door.

‘I swear to God, Dee,’ he hisses, glaring at the door as if he expects his gaze to pierce right through it and set Dee on fire, ‘when we get out of here, I am going to stuff a throw pillow with your hair.’

‘Weirdly specific,’ Mac says after an awkward moment, eyeing Dennis’s flushed scowl with unease, ‘but I agree with the general sentiment.’

‘See if I care, bitches,’ Dee sing-songs, her voice retreating into the distance. ‘‘Cause guess what? I’m out here where you can’t get to me, and you’re stuck in the bar all night, with nobody but each other to complain to.’

‘And don’t bother trying to get out through the vent, dude, ‘cause I blocked it up good,’ Charlie says cheerfully. ‘Catch you on the flipside, fellas.’

Mac smacks a hand fruitlessly against the door as their laughter recedes into the night.

‘Bullshit, there’s like six different ways out of the bar other than the front door,’ he shouts, but they’re too far away to respond. Dennis scrambles to his feet, clicking his fingers, eyes on Mac.

‘We’ll just break a window,’ he says, his voice almost trilling with relief. ‘It’s fine, there’s no need to freak out. Just break a window, how about that?’

‘Great idea, dude,’ Mac says, standing up and clapping him on the shoulder. They’re smiling in victory as they turn to check out the windows on either side of the front door, which means they get to see their own smiles fade in the reflection of the definitely-not-human-sized panes of glass. Mac’s shoulders slump.

‘Or not,’ he says reluctantly. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been _that_ tiny, dude.’

‘Maybe Charlie could fit through one of those,’ Dennis agrees, ‘but neither of us.’

‘Fuck,’ Mac states.

Dennis sighs. ‘Yeah,’ he says, turning around to survey the rest of the bar. Even as he does it, Mac knows he knows it’s hopeless. Charlie knows more ways of getting in and out of the bar than any of the rest of them, and he’s the one who orchestrated this whole thing. If Charlie doesn’t want them to get out, they’re not getting out.

That realisation hits them both at the same moment without either of them speaking a word: their eyes catch and release and Mac’s stomach starts to churn to the same endless rhythm as the last few weeks swoop back in, clogging up the air between them. He’d never admit it to their faces but Mac is uneasily aware that him and Dennis deserve this, even if Dee and Charlie went overboard knocking them out. They’ve done nothing but glare and snipe for way too long and Mac wouldn’t say no to clearing the air, if Dennis wanted to. His heart beats a little faster at the thought of having things back as they were. It wouldn’t even have to be exactly like it was – he’d settle for less, if Dennis wanted to keep his distance, if he was still mad. That would be fine too. Mac could take it. He just – he can’t keep doing this, no matter how pissed he was at Dennis. He can’t.

He opens his mouth to suggest a truce but Dennis holds up a hand without even looking at him.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he says, his voice icy as he passes round behind the bar and pulls up a bottle of Everclear, pours himself a shot. He takes it, and doesn’t offer Mac one. ‘If I have to be in here with you, I’m drinking, not talking.’

Mac closes his mouth with a snap, blinking hard. He shakes his head to clear it. Shouldn’t have expected anything less than the finest Reynolds contempt, aged like a fine wine. Jesus Christ. How long has he known Dennis? He really should’ve known better.

‘Great,’ he says flatly. ‘That’s fucking great to hear, Dennis.’

He sighs, going over to the bar and leaning over it to grab a beer. His arm brushes Dennis’s, a slight static charge passing through them, and Dennis pulls back from it like he’s been burned. He doesn’t look at Mac, just quickly pours another shot and knocks it back, his throat flexing as he swallows.

‘Jesus Christ, Dennis,’ Mac says, his voice thick and almost wobbly.

He grabs the beer, shaking his head in disgust before he reels over to one of the corner booths. It’s one thing to know Dennis can’t stand to be near him and another to witness it first-hand. God, how did Mac fuck this up so badly? He spins a beer mat on its corners, trying to keep it upright, trying to figure this out. In the process of trying to get their friendship back on track by making Dennis happy, he’s managed to secure the exact opposite outcome. He literally had two jobs here, and he’s failed at both of them.

He watches surreptitiously as Dennis switches out the Everclear for PBR and slumps on a bar stool at the corner end of the bar, staring gloomily into the middle distance. He doesn’t look capable of offering Mac any explanations. Maybe he could offer reasons, though. He seems to enjoy pointing out the flaws in Mac’s character, at any rate. 

Mac cracks his knuckles slowly, painfully, one by one as he tries to figure out how to phrase the question. Dennis doesn’t react, just stares stonily at nothing. Mac’s gaze skitters away and back to him over and over again. He looks calm, but the kind that’s got something else under it; something fragile and frantic that Dennis is having trouble controlling.

‘So are we just gonna not talk the whole night?’ Mac asks after maybe another five minutes of this goes by.

‘You realise how redundant that is?’ Dennis asks tonelessly. ‘Asking out loud if we’re going to talk?’

‘Great, thanks for the vocabulary lesson,’ Mac retorts. ‘I just meant –’

‘I think it’s harder to have a conversation with you and _not_ correct you about something dumb, you know that?’ Dennis interrupts, sarcastic with an edge of genuine disbelief. Mac clenches his jaw, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. If this was what he got for asking a simple question, he’d rather sit in silence and roll out of the bar in the morning with nothing any more resolved than it had been when the sun set. ‘There’s gotta be a way of marketing that kind of skill. Making the collective IQ of a room drop the moment you walk in. Find the right backers, we could make millions.’

‘Sounds great,’ Mac says flatly, ignoring the churning in his stomach. ‘We should get right on that.’

‘What’s wrong, Mac?’ Dennis asks, swivelling suddenly to look at him. He crosses his legs and cocks a faux-inquisitive eyebrow. Mac hates it. ‘I thought you wanted to talk?’

‘Not when you’re like this, I don’t,’ Mac fires back faster than he can think better of it, and he closes his eyes in irritation when Dennis gives a delighted laugh, clapping his hands together. He’s staring at Mac, wide-eyed and projecting laughter with a thin, razor-sharp edge.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, is my small talk not to your liking, Mac? Would you like for us to talk about something else? What would you prefer we talk about? Got any suggestions knocking around up there?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mac sighs. He hesitates. Dennis is watching him like he watched the rat sniffing the cheese in the trap that time they had to do Charlie work. Usually Mac would just leave him to it when he’s this full of venom, wait for it to drain out, but he can’t exactly do that right now. There’s only way out of this, and that’s through.

Dennis licks his lips, leaning forward.

‘Shall I tell you what conversation we’re _not_ going to have, Mac?’ he asks, his eyes glinting. He doesn’t wait for Mac to answer; as usual, with Dennis, it’s not that kind of question. ‘We’re certainly not going to have the conversation _you_ want to have, Mac, because I for one am going to throw up if I have to go through it again.’

‘What are you talking about, dude?’ Mac squints at him. ‘What conversation?’

‘You know the one,’ Dennis says silkily, propping himself against the bar on his elbows. His eyes are slitted, cobra-like. ‘I’m sure you’ve got it filed away somewhere, in your coded fucking rolodex, like the one about how you like to watch those workout videos because they’re _motivational_ , and the one about how you just don’t like fucking _ugly_ women –’

‘What is your goddamn point here, Dennis,’ Mac interrupts, rage burning slow and hot in his gut.

‘The conversation about what good friends we are, of course! The conversation about how we’re _blood brothers_ , Mac. The one where you bro it up so hard you go blue in the face, and then you stare at my ass as I walk away.’

‘I do _not_ stare at your ass, Dennis,’ Mac says in a hushed voice, and Dennis buries his face in his hands.

‘Oh my God! Yes, you do! You _absolutely fucking do_ , but that’s not even close to the salient point here, Jesus Christ –’

‘Then what is?’ Mac asks, and even he winces a little as he says it, as Dennis’s eyes narrow again. But if there’s a grain of truth to what Dennis is saying – not that Mac agrees there is – but. If there was. Hypothetically. Wouldn’t it make sense that by this point, denying it would be a reflex more than anything else? Wouldn’t it make sense if Mac just needed a moment to collect himself, sort through what Dennis was saying before he responded to it? Wouldn’t that be reasonable?

Not that Dennis has ever looked reasonable in the eye a day in his life.

‘I don’t know why I keep trying with you,’ Dennis says, hair falling over his forehead as he tosses his head around in frustration. His gaze, when it lands, would almost be pleading if it wasn’t so angry. ‘I keep trying, and trying, and trying, long past the point when I say I’m giving up. I mean, look at me now, for God’s sake, when I already said I wasn’t going to have this conversation again!’

‘Then why do you even bother, Dennis? Why are you even giving me the time of day?’ Mac spits, and asking it is like dropping something he treasures into the yuck puddle; not knowing what lies at the bottom, not knowing whether it’ll come through unscathed.

‘I don’t know!’ Dennis nearly howls in frustration, abruptly getting off the stool and planting his feet as if he’s ready to charge. Mac lurches up out of the booth almost on reflex, to equalise it, to bring them closer together, or further apart or – just do something, anything, ball up the tension in the room and throw it back at Dennis. Dennis doesn’t miss it. He watches Mac clenching his fists, breathing hard. ‘Maybe it’s irritating the shit out of me that you can’t just be honest with yourself! Maybe at this point it’s pathetic enough that it’s verging on _genuinely offensive_ , how about that?’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Mac gets out, his heart pounding in his ears. ‘Why would you give a shit about something that doesn’t have anything to do with you?’

Dennis gives a short, humourless laugh.

‘Why do any of us do anything, Mac? And anyway, that’s not exactly true, is it? It does have something to do with me, or you wouldn’t have been doing all this shit for me lately.’ He snorts. ‘Or y’know, the last ten years of our lives.’

Mac stops, wind knocked out of him. His eyes dart to Dennis and away, skittering around the bar for an escape.

‘I, uh,’ he starts, not convincingly. He licks his lips. ‘I don’t know what you –’

‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ Dennis warns, practically wagging a finger at him. ‘You think I didn’t notice? How stupid do you think I am? You set an alarm on my phone reminding me when to take my meds, Mac. You – you took care of me when I was sick. Jesus Christ, dude. You pulled out my chair last time we went to Guigino’s.’

This last he says quietly, with a trace of hesitation, as if he’d at least thought about keeping it back. It stings anyway. If Guigino’s isn’t off limits, then what the hell is?

Mac stays quiet. What would he even say? He has no possible defence. He tried to get back something they’ve obviously lost, and he failed, and now Dennis is punishing him for the attempt. There’s no way to spin that so Mac isn’t the pathetic one, and Dennis already has enough ammunition on that score without Mac providing any more.

When Dennis speaks again, it’s deceptively gentler, if you don’t pay attention to the actual words.

‘I just want you to say it,’ he says. Mac looks up at him and his gaze is almost pleading. ‘I just want you to admit it, just once, and not take it back. Can’t you see how much better you’ll feel? Didn’t you feel better, on the cruise ship?’

A startled laugh breaks out of Mac.

‘You think I felt good about that?’ he asks. ‘You think that was a good time for me?’

‘But you _knew_ , Mac,’ Dennis says. His eyes are like lasers. ‘You knew for real. And you said it, you actually _said it_ –’

‘Saying it doesn’t mean anything,’ Mac says, looking away. ‘People say dumb shit all the time.’

‘Yeah, and maybe it would have meant something when you took it back if you weren’t still following me around like a puppy dog,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Just admit it, Mac. Just admit what the fuck is really going on here.’

It’s the softly-hissed _fuck_ that gets Mac, jolts his blood through his veins.

‘Jesus,’ he says too loudly, running a hand through his hair and staring at Dennis, whose nostrils are flaring again, lips thin and white again, ‘because a guy can’t do something nice for his best friend every now and then, Dennis, excuse me for breathing –’

‘Jesus Christ, Mac, don’t be so deluded, it’s pathetic in a man your age –’

‘What do you want me to say, Dennis? What _exact phrase_ did you have in mind? Because you’re the one who should get to pick it, obviously, you’re the one in control of all of this –’

‘You know what I want you to say!’ Dennis snarls. ‘You know –’

‘Fine! Jesus Christ, Dennis, I don’t want to fight anymore! I just want to make you happy,’ Mac bursts out, and then immediately shuts his mouth with horror. There’s silence as Dennis gapes at him, the anger emptying from his face and leaving it blank.

A rush of ice water panic zips down Mac’s spine. Dennis does not respond well to sincere statements of affection. Dennis does not respond well to sincere statements of affection _from Mac_. This is a terrible idea and everything Mac has ever done is stupid, which makes sense because he, Mac, is incredibly stupid. God, this is page one of the Dennis handbook. This is something Mac learned when they were still teenagers: never give Dennis more than you can afford to lose.

He opens his mouth to try and salvage something, anything – some speck of dignity – but before he can say anything Dennis clears his throat.

‘I know that,’ he says, and if it isn’t gentle, if there’s the suggestion of hysteria lurking there, then at least Dennis is reining it in. He looks more likely to bolt than laugh, actually, but somehow he’s not doing that either. Not that there’s anywhere for him to run right now, anyway. ‘Mac, I know.’

Mac waits for the punchline but it doesn’t come. It’s just the two of them staring at each other, maybe six feet apart, waiting for someone to speak.

‘Okay then,’ Mac says slowly, swallowing against his nausea. ‘If you already know, why are you giving me so much shit about it?’

‘Mac,’ Dennis says, rolling his eyes with an exasperated, shaky fondness. He gives a helpless shrug, spreading his hands open wide. He doesn’t look angry anymore. He doesn’t look angry at all. ‘Come on. Why do you think?’

Some moments hit you like wrecking balls, Mac already knew that; for his money, everyone should spend some time out on the top deck of a cruise ship in the pouring rain yelling at God, even if it hurts. It sure cleared up a few things for him. But some moments creep up on you slowly, stealing over you under cover of being something else before they overtake you, and then you finally see them for what they are.               

‘Dennis,’ Mac says weakly, his arms limp and useless at his sides where they could be reaching. He should move. He needs to move, he _has_ to, but how do you break into a moment like this one? How do you even start something like this? How does he take that first step? Dennis told him that the world was safer with him around but Mac doesn’t feel capable of protecting Dennis, or either of them, from what might happen here; from what is going to happen; from what is happening.

Dennis doesn’t say anything although he looks a few times as if he might; his bottom lip trembles with the temptation. A muscle in his jaw jumps, his fingers twitching nervously at his sides, and maybe that’s what does it in the end – those awful, fragile tics Dennis can’t control, nervous with wanting it, with _waiting for it,_ when Mac has been stupid and mute for so, so long with fear of being the only one – and then Mac is finally moving, without permission from God or Satan or anyone else who might think they have a say in this, stomach lurching at the thought of making Dennis wait even a second longer, moving until he’s in front of Dennis who breathes out in a rush when Mac gets close and he _leans in_ , oh God, Dennis leans in on an open breath like Mac was always afraid he wouldn’t and his fluttering, tightening hands land on Mac’s shoulders, and then Mac touches Dennis’s face gently and Dennis’s eyes are wide and blue and scared, and then Mac kisses him.

It’s soft at first, just warm pressure and the slight tang of beer, Dennis’s mouth already smeared half open as if he’d been on the verge of speaking. He pulls back first, blinking at Mac. His hands stroke and twist in the short hairs at the back of Mac’s neck.

‘Do it again, right,’ he whispers, not really a question, eyes darting between Mac’s mouth and his eyes. Mac nods frantically so that Dennis is smiling when he leans back in, half-laughing at him, and Mac can’t help thinking that whatever else happens now, Dennis will always have looked at him like that. For the rest of his life, he’ll remember this, and it won’t be imaginary, and it won’t be a dream.

He goes in hungrier this time, wrapping his arms around Dennis’s waist and pulling him in until there isn’t an inch between them, bunching up the shirt in the small of his back. He can’t even begin to process the thousand forms of sensory input all hitting him at once, brain madly scrabbling to catalogue everything; the slight dampness of Dennis’s shirt where it’s been stuck to the small of his back, the slickness of his bottom lip when Mac softly bites it, the half-gasp he gives that he converts quickly into a groan, like he didn’t mean to sound like that, wistful and young and like he might want to wind his arms around Mac’s neck and never leave. He’s winding his arms around Mac’s neck anyway; Mac hopes he never leaves. 

They pull apart again to breathe although only by an inch, their bodies still locked together at the hips; Dennis’s lips skid along the line of Mac’s jaw, breathe out a harsh breath and Mac shivers, fingers locking tight across Dennis’s back. He bumps up against the thousand things that are different from kissing girls, big and small: it’s like a record finally playing smoothly when it’s skipped every single time before. He feels like he’s being zapped directly in the brain stem. And maybe the best part – he doesn’t even have to invent anything, doesn’t have to pretend. Doesn’t have to inject any false enthusiasm into the way his hands are shaking, his heart running an uneven, pounding beat, nearly bursting out of his chest.

Dennis’s eyes catch on his and hold, like he knows exactly what Mac is thinking. Mac’s stomach swoops. Dennis doesn’t look much calmer, his cheeks flushed and his lips bruised dark pink, eyes heavy lidded. His fingers carve trails through Mac’s hair, grab handfuls and grip to the root, pulling him back down with a slow, intent smirk. Mac’s eyes flutter closed and he groans into Dennis’s mouth. Dennis opens up wide, wider, widest; Mac’s hands yank the shirt out of the back of Dennis’s jeans and clutch at his bare, slicked skin.

Dennis shivers hard when Mac’s thumbs brush over the ridge of his hips, his breath hitching in his throat. Mac zeroes in on the sound like a heat-seeking missile and grinds down against him slow and deliberate, or as slow as he can possibly be when every nerve in his body is on fire. Dennis _gasps_.

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ he says breathlessly, pulling off and placing his hands firmly on Mac’s shoulders, clearly trying to untangle them enough to think. He leans back into Mac’s grasping, teasing hands. He swallows and his throat bobs rapidly; Mac follows the movement, rapt, drifts back up to watch Dennis watching him, breathing still uneven. Mac’s never seen his cheeks go so pink. He only knew they could flush in rage; Dennis has never looked like this in the tapes, but then he never usually kisses for this long. Mac’s gaze is magnetised to his bottom lip. Anyone who got close enough to see him like this and didn’t make the best of the opportunity didn’t deserve to lay a hand on him, Mac would go to the mat on that one.

‘Why?’ Mac asks, and even to his ears it sounds plaintive enough that he can understand Dennis’s startled laugh.

‘Not because I don’t want to,’ Dennis says, half-rolling his eyes even as he clasps the back of Mac’s neck in reassurance, ‘obviously.’

He gestures between them and sets his other hand on Mac’s chest, right over his heart. His fingertips scrunch up the material, a makeshift claw.

‘But – maybe we should slow it down a little. Where do you picture this going, right now?’ he asks, little furrow appearing between his eyebrows. ‘In this bar we’ve been locked inside until our asshole friends come to release us in the morning, with no supplies, places to lie down or changes of clothes?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mac shrugs, settling a little more firmly against Dennis, who breathes out a controlled half-sigh at the friction and glares at him, digging his fingertips into Mac’s shoulders. Mac smirks. ‘Whatever you were picturing and then some, probably.’

‘Uh huh,’ Dennis responds, arching an eyebrow. That muscle in his jaw jumps again and it occurs to Mac that there’s finally nothing stopping him leaning down to taste it, maybe bite a little, and so he does – gently, grazing with his teeth and soothing it with the flat of his tongue. Dennis tastes like sweat, chemical traces of cologne, grain alcohol. He draws in a sharp breath, his fingers tightening on Mac’s shoulders.

‘You know we can’t – you know you can’t fuck me here, right?’

‘Um,’ Mac says, drawing back to look at Dennis with raised eyebrows, protest lodged in his throat directly under the hysterical urge to reiterate the words _fuck me,_ ‘Dennis. Dennis. Dude. I _absolutely_ can.’

‘No, you can’t,’ Dennis says, a little firmer this time. ‘That’s not happening tonight, Mac.’

‘It’s interesting how your mind just went right there, though,’ Mac breathes out, kissing Dennis softly on the corner of his mouth. ‘Just went right to me fucking you.’

Dennis looks shifty and doesn’t answer, his mouth falling slightly open under the pressure of Mac’s kiss. He makes a small sound and his hand curls round the back of Mac’s neck, holding him gently in place. The spread of his fingers is a shot of something fiery tipped down the back of Mac’s throat; it’s the touch of someone who knows they own what they’re handling, no matter that he’s the one tipping his head back for Mac’s mouth, exposing the line of his throat.

‘You’re gonna give me beard burn,’ he gets out, his voice thin and thready.

Mac grins against his throat.

‘Yep,’ he says. ‘Yeah I am, Dennis.’

‘You could at least try and sound apologetic about it,’ Dennis mutters. ‘Leaving marks is so tacky.’

He says it like he’s trying to mean it but his fingers are twitching, twisting in Mac’s hair and he’s pushing his hips forward in a way that invites Mac to disregard what’s actually coming out of his mouth. He suspects Dennis is saying it on the kneejerk principle of being as contrary as possible, anyway; he can’t stop getting in his own way, not even in this.

Whatever this is – quickly becoming, anyway; Mac darts back up to kiss him again and Dennis’s mouth falls open for it like he was waiting, slipping his tongue inside with a small sound of satisfaction, their joined mouths passing breath back and forth and Dennis’s tangled hands impatiently twisting in the back of Mac’s shirt. Mac’s knee keeps trying to edge in between Dennis’s thighs and Dennis’s hips roll in short, abortive movements, clearly unopposed to that particular motion even if he’s shouted down the other. But Mac can’t get enough leverage for it and stay upright; he needs to get Dennis up against something.

He pulls back just far enough to scan the surrounding area, planning on just picking a direction and walking them backwards until Dennis’s back hits a flat surface, but then Dennis waves an irritated hand in his face.

‘I didn’t mean stop altogether,’ he says, frowning. He can’t seem to stop staring at Mac’s mouth.

Mac swallows and rolls his hips forward a little more urgently in lieu of trying to formulate a more coherent argument.

‘Don’t you wanna sit, Dennis,’ he says, raising his eyebrows as Dennis blows out a slow breath and jerks into the movement of Mac’s hips. ‘I mean, even if we’re not gonna fuck, we have to do _something.’_

‘Yeah, yeah, agreed, sitting’s good,’ Dennis mutters, kissing Mac again once, quickly. ‘We can – we’ll figure something out.’

He repeats Mac’s survey of the bar and winds up frowning.

‘I know, right?’ Mac exclaims.

‘This shouldn’t be so difficult,’ Dennis says, bewildered. ‘We’ve both had sex in here before.’

‘Yeah but that was like, in the bathroom and the bunker, not in the main bar,’ Mac points out. He casts around for inspiration. ‘On top of the pool table?’

Dennis contemplates it, nose scrunching up in thought.

‘It wouldn’t take our weight,’ he decides.

‘It totally would, bro,’ Mac argues. ‘Charlie did like a line dancing show for us last week on that thing, remember? If it can take a high kick, it can take a roll in the hay.’

‘Yeah, and Charlie probably weakened it with his insane dance moves, Mac,’ Dennis argues. ‘You feel like being on top of it when it collapses?’

Mac wrinkles his nose but has to shake his head. Dennis returns to sweeping the bar when his eye catches on one of the corner booths. He frowns, looking from the booth to Mac and back again. He grabs Mac by the hand and tugs him over next to it.

‘Alright, what about if we –’ he says, pushing at Mac’s shoulder until he gets the picture and sits down hard on the edge of the booth. He opens his mouth to complain about being pushed around when Dennis’s intent hits him and punches the air out of his lungs: Dennis looms above him, telegraphing his next movements. It’s the furthest apart they’ve been since this began and he sees Dennis taking a moment too, looking down at him, registering the change; he smooths a hand over his helplessly tangled curls, the tilt of his head oddly solemn as he leans down. The set of his mouth is determined. This must be what it looks like, when someone chooses you.

‘And then if I –’ he continues, gaze fixed somewhere in the region of Mac’s left thigh as he lowers himself down slowly, planting his knees on either side of Mac’s thighs and settling back with a soft grunt. Mac’s hands land helplessly on his hips. He can’t imagine what his face is doing right now, but whatever it is makes Dennis grin like a triumphant king.

‘That works,’ Dennis says, his voice low. He leans forward until the tips of their noses touch, mouths just barely brushing. He stares Mac right in the eyes as if that’ll somehow distract him from how Dennis is undoing the fly of his jeans with one hand. Mac’s so hard that even the brush of Dennis’s fingers makes his hips jerk, forces out an embarrassing hitch in his breath.

‘Uh huh,’ Mac gets out, his hands skimming up the back of Dennis’s shirt again, blunt nails scratching mindless patterns on his skin. The muscles in his thighs are bunching with tension, his throat dry and prickling with want. It’s entirely possible the top of his head is going to fly straight off when Dennis actually gets a hand on his dick.

Dennis catches his eye when he finishes undoing the zipper, one eyebrow delicately arched, and quirks the corner of his mouth in such a practised motion that Mac grabs his hand by reflex.

‘What,’ Dennis frowns. ‘Don’t you want –’

‘Of course I want,’ Mac fidgets, rolling his hips up against Dennis pointedly. Dennis makes a startled noise and blinks down at him; his hand goes white knuckled where he’s holding the table for balance.

‘Then what?’ he asks impatiently.

‘Just,’ Mac swallows, casting around for a plausible source of hesitation, ‘it’s like, a historic moment, dude. The first time you’re touching my dick.’

‘I’ve touched your dick before,’ Dennis points out. ‘I’ve seen you naked before. And now we’ve kissed, so stop being a fucking girl and let me jerk you off.’

He goes in again but Mac tightens his hand on Dennis’s wrist, baffled.

‘When the fuck have you touched my dick, dude? I think I’d remember that.’

‘When we were filming _Lethal Weapon 6_ ,’ Dennis says, pained, leaning his head back and closing his eyes with a sigh. ‘You remember, the shower scene.’

There is no power on earth that could make Mac forget the shower scene.

‘We didn’t touch dicks, dude,’ he reminds Dennis, his hand tightening on the flexing muscles in Dennis’s back. Dennis shivers at the scratch of Mac’s nails, his hips inching up and then back down in a slow grind. Mac swallows again, his throat clicking. ‘We were all taped up down there.’

‘Like you couldn’t still feel it,’ Dennis rolls his eyes, half-leering, shooting Mac a look beneath his lashes. ‘Like you weren’t still thinking about it.’

‘I’m always thinking about it,’ Mac says honestly.

The glint of Dennis’s startled, pleased grin says he shouldn’t just hand over material like that but he can’t help it. He’s finally allowed to say it after over twenty years of thoughts like this, shoved down where he’d hoped not even God would be able to hear them. Over twenty years, and now he can speak.

Dennis watches Mac’s face as he carefully runs his free hand down Mac’s abs, stopping just short of the exposed waistband of his boxers, although Mac doesn’t stop him this time. He’s barely breathing as it is, and stopping Dennis the first two times was hard enough.

‘Then let’s make those thoughts a reality,’ Dennis breathes over his mouth. Mac wants to call him on what a line that is, how smooth he thinks he is, the words are on the tip of his tongue but it turns out that not being able to breathe for wanting somebody makes it kind of hard to talk. He just watches instead, no excuses left, his eyes glued to the movement of Dennis’s hand. It seems to get the point across. 

Dennis’s wrist skitters over the head of his dick as he works his hand inside Mac’s boxers. It’s not smooth, but it makes Mac gasp anyway.

‘Huh,’ Dennis breathes, gaze riveted on Mac’s face as his fingers stroke clumsily, electric spots of contact. ‘God, Mac, you’re –’

He pulls Mac’s dick out of his pants and blinks down at it like he’s surprised to find it there. Mac never thought being stared at like a science experiment would be hot but maybe it’s the context; Dennis certainly never looked this interested – panting, licking his lips, open-mouthed interested – in any of his tapes, even the five star ones. He smooths his palm slowly over the wetness at the head, fingers circled around the shaft. He lets Mac thrust once, jerkily, watching Mac’s face with narrowed eyes as he does so, then pins him firmly to his seat with his thighs, settling in with a victorious grin. Mac groans, muscles bunching in his forearms as he grabs the table and side of the booth for support. He needs them to stay upright. He needs them not to float away.

‘You’re so wet already,’ Dennis murmurs, playing around with the head some more, stroking idly at the vein along the underside as if it isn’t lighting Mac up from the inside out with flashes of pleasure. ‘Are you always this sensitive? Do you always get this turned on so fast?’

‘Oh my god,’ Mac says. His voice sounds distant to himself. ‘Can you not be giving me sex tips right now?’

‘I’m not,’ Dennis says, sounding insulted. He twists his wrist a little harder and Mac bucks up against the pressure of Dennis’s thighs, groaning at the frustrated urge to thrust. Somehow, it’s just winding him up tighter, faster; as always with Dennis, it’s calculated to aggravate him but he wants more of it anyway. ‘The mere fact of my having sex with you indicates that I have confidence in your ability to perform. If I have any advice, I’ll save it for afterwards.’

‘Great, thanks,’ Mac replies through gritted teeth. He bites his lip. ‘Fuck, Dennis.’

Dennis’s teeth clack together; Mac blinks through the haze to find him flushing from pink to red, staring. His hand starts to move faster, like something finally clicking into gear; he watches Mac intently as he rolls his hips in a steady, slowly building rhythm.

Bumping up against Dennis’s crotch, which is still clothed. A light bulb goes on.

‘Wait, wait, what about you, bro,’ he says. More like stutters, the words linked to that slow, slick, inexorable tempo.

‘What about me?’ Dennis mutters, probably the first time he’s ever said those words aloud in his entire life and he’s too preoccupied to even realise what it implies, still watching Mac with that breathless, scorching intensity. A question pops into Mac’s brain like the cork from a wine bottle: how long has Dennis wanted this? How long has he been waiting? Mac had always assumed, when he let himself consider it at all, that Dennis just got off on being wanted – but the look in his eyes is hungry enough to make Mac question that.

‘You gotta let me touch you, Dennis,’ Mac gets out, an octave away from pleading. This is such an insanely uncomfortable position he’s amazed Dennis has let it go on this long without demanding hand-to-dick attention himself, but then again, he’s having so much fun steering it’s probably not occurred to him to complain. Mac’s thighs are going numb, both of them are still fully clothed and Dennis didn’t even spit on his hand or anything so there’s an edge of friction skating on uncomfortable, but none of that is as distracting as the fact that he hasn’t got anywhere near Dennis’s dick yet. ‘Also, you’re too far away.’

‘Too far away? We’re like two inches apart, Mac, how can I be –’

Mac feels the question is best answered with action – Dennis is in the middle of a word when Mac kisses him and it gets lost in the confusion, but Dennis surrenders it with a minimum of indignation. When he catches his breath he settles in, kisses Mac slow and in perfect rhythm with his strokes, as if Mac might somehow fail to make the connection if not kept in the loop. Mac takes a shaky breath in between brushes of lips; he holds Dennis’s jaw with one hand and starts rooting around between his legs with another.

‘Ow! Watch out, bro, that’s attached –’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Mac whispers, drawing back from the sting in Dennis’s voice. ‘Kind of hard to manoeuvre, y’know. There’s a lot going on down here.’

Dennis’s hand had stopped moving with the distraction and Mac bucks into it forlornly. Dennis pulls back to glare. He breathes out hard, nostrils flaring like a horse.

‘Can’t believe I have to do everything myself,’ he mutters. There’s the blunt, unmistakable sound of a zipper. He raises an eyebrow at Mac, nodding down at his crotch. ‘D’you think you can find your way around from there?’

Dennis could arch an eyebrow in contempt when faced with a firing squad, but he never did get good at hiding that waver in his voice, the one Mac knows like the back of his hand. He nods, giving another shaky breath as he reaches down. Dennis’s hand jumps back to life again, giving Mac’s dick a bizarrely reassuring squeeze. Mac huffs a laugh against Dennis’s jaw, the skid of his lips not quite a kiss.

Dennis breaths out hard when Mac touches him, like he’s been punched. Mac has to breathe in and out several times real quick himself, just to keep it together. Dennis hasn’t been controlling himself at all, not like Mac had thought he might be – he’s full and heavy in Mac’s hand, and his hips are giving these inching little jerks now, impulsive and difficult to navigate with Dennis sat in his lap like this. He’s been leaking into his boxers too and Mac wants to rib him for it but then he gets distracted by the petal softness of the skin under his fingers. It’s probably the softest thing he’s ever touched.

‘Wow,’ he says, entirely without artifice.

Dennis snorts in the middle of kissing him, his hand twisting at a new angle so Mac gasps. It’s a collision of half kisses and laughter before they find a rhythm that works, but then it _works_ ; Dennis moans into his mouth and thrusts fast and hard into Mac’s hand, not even trying to make the sound into something less slutty.

‘Fuck, yes,’ he hisses against Mac’s jaw when Mac shunts them closer together with a graceless shove of his hand at the small of Dennis’s back; the hairs on Mac’s forearm bristle against Dennis’s as his hand wraps around both their dicks and strokes them in tandem. Dennis’s clever fingers work their way down to Mac’s balls and Mac’s mouth opens silent and wide against Dennis’s grin. He gives a short, breathless laugh and kisses Mac again, all wide slick open mouth and generous as he finally lifts his hips, letting Mac thrust up with a groan. The relief of pressure shunts Mac abruptly close to collapse.

‘Dennis, I’m –’

‘Yeah, c’mon, Mac,’ Dennis breathes, and they pull back at the same time, but not far; just far enough to look at each other, to keep looking while it sinks in.

Mac comes while Dennis is mid-grind, with shuddering hips and an unbelievable shock of pleasure as he spills over both their hands, slicking the way further; he comes while Dennis is still staring at him, expression cracked open like an egg. Dennis mashes his mouth against Mac’s while Mac is still panting, crushing whatever words he might have said, and shudders through his own orgasm with a loud, pained groan. Mac strokes him through it, trying to cover as much of Dennis’s skin as possible with his hands, clutching him close, closer.

They breathe heavily through a long aftermath. Sweat cools on Mac’s shoulders until he’s shivering in ripples, jerking when Dennis’s fingers twist in the short hairs at the back of his neck. His thighs are numb from Dennis’s slumped weight and his shirt is sticking to his back; he should just whip it off and surrender it to clean up if they’re going to get out of this booth with any dignity. But he can’t do it yet, can’t make himself pull away from Dennis clinging to him like this, burying his face in Mac’s neck. He wipes his hand clean on his shirt with a grimace and sighs as he loops both arms around Dennis, stroking his Dennis’s back and pulling him in until they’re chest to chest. He breathes Dennis in contentedly, uncaring if Dennis gives him shit for it. He’s allowed. He’s _allowed_.

Dennis makes a muffled noise that Mac realises with blunt, spreading shock, is a sniff.

‘Den?’ he asks softly, and Dennis twitches against him. Wetness and scrunched up lashes brush against Mac’s neck. He runs his hand up and down Dennis’s spine, frowning. ‘Dennis? Are you okay, dude?’

A horrifying thought occurs to him.

‘I didn’t hurt you, did I? Oh my God, did I like, scratch you up down there? Shit, Dennis, I’m so sorry –’

‘No, idiot,’ Dennis mumbles, his voice somehow thick and snarling at the same time. He sounds like an angry cat looks. His hands are claws digging into Mac, holding him in place.

‘Oh,’ Mac says, relaxing minutely. He rubs Dennis’s back in slow circles, like he does when Dennis is sick, and presses a kiss to his hair. The strain of this position on Mac’s back with nothing to lean on is becoming more of a problem now his body isn’t rigid with tension, but the ramifications of that seem less urgent than the potential consequences of making Dennis move.  

Dennis eventually does it on his own anyway, giving a long, beleaguered sigh and then erupting in a flurry of sniffs, hands swiping quickly over his face, drawing back from Mac as he collects himself. Mac’s hands hover, not sure where to land, but he can’t stop looking at Dennis: the smeared make up, clumped eyelashes, lips bitten and red. A stubborn rim of mascara sludge persists despite his best efforts to swipe it away. Mac impulsively leans forward and dots a kiss just under it, half glancing off Dennis’s cheekbone as he turns. Dennis goes still. Mac holds his breath.

‘Okay,’ Dennis says, so quiet and low Mac barely hears it. His mouth twitches, eyes flickering up to Mac and away again, off to the side, hiding in the shadows in the opposite side of the booth. ‘Weird.’

‘You’re the one who got all weepy,’ Mac points out. His hand has found the delicate underside of Dennis’s left wrist and circles round it like a cuff, thumb stroking over his butterfly pulse. Dennis lets out a long, uneven breath and laughs abruptly, dry and tired. Despite a total and complete lack of energy, Mac’s heart still seizes at the sound. ‘You’re totally emotional over my dick, dude, just admit –’

‘Allergies,’ Dennis interrupts, ‘and – dust. From the –’

‘From your dick?’ Mac asks innocently.

Dennis’s mouth falls open in a perfect O of shock. There’s a moment when it could go either way and Mac’s blood races, exhilarated to find out which one. Then the mask splits right down the middle, and it’s a beautiful thing to see, laugh rippling out of Dennis in pure surprise. He smacks Mac on the arm almost as an afterthought and Mac leans in and kisses him again mid-laugh, can’t help it. He hasn’t seen Dennis smile so much in months. He fastens his clasped hands in the small of Dennis’s back and leans in, and in.

‘That was a good one, man,’ Dennis admits against his mouth when they pause for breath. Mac can’t make himself pull back although that would make it easier to talk; some kind of decades-dormant skin hunger is operating his body now. Dennis is so _warm_. ‘Not true, but a good one nonetheless.’

‘I know,’ Mac says drowsily, mouth barely forming the words. ‘S’why I said it.’

‘Where the fuck are we going to sleep?’ Dennis asks on a sigh. ‘Why did we do this here? Why does anything happen.’

‘None of those are real questions,’ Mac replies, leaning his head against Dennis’s collarbone. ‘No, wait. I mean no real answers. Tired.’

‘You’re stupid after you come, huh,’ Dennis says thoughtfully, stroking idly through Mac’s hair. ‘Stupider. That’s interesting.’

‘Stupider’s not a word. More stupid,’ Mac mumbles. He pushes words out through a yawn: ‘Sleeping bags in the back office. Floor or booth?’

Dennis hesitates for a second.

‘Floor,’ he decides. Mac opens his mouth to point out that the booths would definitely be more comfortable although they’d have to sleep separately, then sees the tensed set of Dennis’s mouth and shuts it again. He heaves Dennis up by the thighs with a groan and goes to get the sleeping bags, cracking his back and whooping tiredly at the ache as he walks gingerly to the back office.

‘You know you still didn’t really say it,’ Dennis says after a while, when they’ve cleaned up and got settled with the lights off, as comfortable lying on two sleeping bags and a pile of lost and found coats as they possibly can be. His voice is low but clear in the dark.

Mac makes a questioning noise, tightening his arm around Dennis’s waist on reflex.

‘You know. It.’

Mac sighs loudly against the back of Dennis’s neck. He should have known Dennis wouldn’t be able to let that lie.

‘I said – you know, it was similar enough,’ Mac grumbles. Something grim and angry is trying to get his attention, jerked awake by Dennis’s words, but Mac flat out refuses to deal with it right now. The monsters have always still been there when he’s woken up before; surely they’ll keep until morning. ‘Besides, we literally just – you know. Isn’t that enough? I mean it’s kind of implied, dude.’

‘It’s important for you to say it,’ Dennis insists, rolling over to look at Mac, dislodging his arm. It’s dark as shit in here but his eyes are bright with something, anyway; something streetlamps can’t take credit for.

‘And what about you?’ Mac points out, arching an eyebrow as he stretches, settling onto his back with a hiss at the ache. His hand finds the hem of Dennis’s shirt and yanks until Dennis rolls his eyes and edges closer, nestles under Mac’s shoulder like he resents every second of it.

‘What about me?’

‘You haven’t said it either,’ Mac says. He keeps his eyes on Dennis while he says it, and doesn’t miss the way his expression shutters, his shoulders stiffening under Mac’s arm.

‘Well, I don’t need to,’ he argues after a long moment. ‘I’m secure enough in my masculinity not to have to –’

‘If you were that secure, you’d be able to say it, bro.’

‘If _you_ were that secure, you wouldn’t keep calling me bro all the time,’ Dennis retorts.

‘What d’you want me to call you, huh?’

Dennis opens his mouth and shuts it again.

‘Ha,’ Mac snorts sleepily, shutting his eyes and shuffling back against the makeshift cushions. Dennis lays his head down on Mac’s chest delicately – if Mac was a vinyl diner booth, Dennis would have wiped the seat before he sat down – but he doesn’t feel asleep; his muscles are still tensed with thought, ready to spring back up again with a moment’s notice.

‘That’s actually a real problem we’ve got there, Mac,’ he says seriously after a minute or two. Mac groans and Dennis flaps a hand at him. ‘No, no, listen – think about it. A forty-year-old man can’t call another forty-year-old man his boyfriend. That’s just absurd. And partner won’t do either, I refuse to explain myself to every cretin who can’t put two and two together and realise that we’re not talking business here.’

‘We don’t have to call it anything right now, Den,’ Mac sighs, although a thrill goes through him at the sound of Dennis using those words in reference to him at all, even if it’s just to discredit them. Dennis doesn’t want this to end tonight. He doesn’t want this to be a one-time thing. ‘It literally just happened. We can figure it out tomorrow, okay?’

‘Well, you’re the one who brought it up,’ Dennis retorts. ‘Now you’ve got me hot about it.’

‘You want me to call you something, I’ll call you my man, Dennis,’ Mac huffs out as he fidgets, and grins wide at Dennis’s judgmental silence. That alone is worth staying up for. ‘You’re my fella,’ he crows. ‘You’re my _guy_.’

‘I am not your _guy_ ,’ Dennis imitates, voice going nasal and weird at the end. Mac snorts, chest shaking with laughter. Dennis swats at him. ‘This isn’t the fifties, bro. I think we might need to get a little more specific than ‘guy’.’

‘Alright then, you’re my best guy,’ Mac says. He grins again at the sensation of Dennis’s hair brushing his chest as he swivels round to glare. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes.

‘Dude,’ Dennis says after a moment of awed silence, ‘that’s like, the gayest thing you’ve ever said. And I’m drawing from a really, really long rap sheet, here.’

‘Alright, that’s great. Go to sleep, Dennis,’ Mac suggests, finally letting a hint of irritation show in his voice. ‘Go the fuck to sleep, boyfriend or partner or whatever the fuck of mine.’

Dennis sighs but capitulates, thank God, settling back down with what he probably thinks is a stealthy sigh of contentment. Mac’s back is going to be absolutely wrecked tomorrow between the booth sex and the floor cuddling but it’s not like they’ve got any alternatives. Dennis keeps making these abortive shuffling movements trying to get closer to Mac, as if they aren’t sandwiched together from head to toe. Mac’ll take his chances on the floor.

‘We’ll talk about this in the morning,’ Dennis says authoritatively, as if Mac gives a shit. ‘We’re clearly not doing our best work right now.’

Mac mumbles something affirmative and kisses Dennis on the head. Dennis sets one prim hand on Mac’s chest before his breathing starts to even out. It occurs to Mac as he drifts to sleep that it’s the wrong side if Dennis is looking for his heart, but he’s asleep before he can work up the energy to point that out.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this fic is making my entire month, guys <3 <3 <3

‘Wake up, boners,’ sneers a familiar voice.

Mac blinks awake with a wince, hand coming up automatically to shield his eyes from what feels like the actual sun beaming directly down on them. Dennis makes a snuffling noise of protest and tries to hide in Mac’s chest, pulling the sleeping bag over his head. The blinding light resolves into the squinting figures of Dee and Charlie, poised above them with matching raised eyebrows.

‘Wow,’ says Charlie. ‘That’s … _wow_. Guess you guys really figured your shit out like we told you to, huh.’

Dennis goes still against Mac’s chest.

‘Told you, Charlie,’ Dee says, placing her hands smugly on her hips as she smirks down at them. ‘I mean, we did lock them in here overnight. What did you expect to find this morning?’

‘Broken glass,’ Charlie shrugs. ‘Maybe some skin.’

‘Gross,’ Mac mumbles. ‘We are actually right here, dude.’

‘Oh, we know,’ Charlie says as he and Dee look back down at them in freakish unison. Mac blinks, kind of wishing Dennis was awake enough to face the judgment with him. He pulls the sleeping bag up over his head to find Dennis beady-eyed and glaring up at him. He frowns.

‘Dude, you gotta come out here, I’m getting hammered. What are we even gonna say?’

‘What do you mean, what are we going to say?’ Dennis whispers furiously, morning breath hitting Mac’s face. Mac winces and Dennis scowls in response. ‘We don’t owe them a single fucking explanation, Mac. These are the assholes that locked us in here in the first place!’

‘We can literally hear every word you’re saying,’ Dee’s voice points out. ‘We’re stood three feet away from you.’

Mac pops back up out of the sleeping bag to find Dee and Charlie wearing matching unimpressed expressions. Dennis pinches him hard on the arm and he winces, letting out a yelp. Dee’s eyebrows go up and up until they’re nearly at her hairline.

‘Uh,’ he flounders. ‘Just – go get me a beer, Dee. Charlie, go with her.’

‘I’m not getting you a beer, Mac,’ Dee exclaims. ‘It’s eight in the morning!’

‘Wow, really? That’s great, Dee, now fuck off over there, go, scoot –’ he says, waving them over towards the bar. Dee looks on the verge of yanking off the sleeping bag until Charlie puts a hand on her arm and mutters something, looking down at them and back up at her. She doesn’t look at him but she doesn’t throw him off, either. Her shoulders relax a little at whatever he’s saying. Huh. That’s new.  

‘I’m still not getting you a beer,’ Dee mutters as she turns on her heel. Charlie shakes his head at Mac as he backs up, mock-sorrowful. Mac flips him the bird.

‘Okay, I think I bought us a few minutes,’ Mac whispers, pulling the sleeping bag over his head again. ‘So what’s the plan, buddy?’

Dennis stares at him in wordless outrage. The night hasn’t been good to him – the wrinkles around his eyes are caked in leftover make up, his cheeks red and creased from lying on Mac’s shirt. The set of his mouth is furious, thin and white; the urge to kiss it hits Mac like a mallet. His eyes zoom in on a vivid red mark on the underside of Dennis’s jaw and he swallows unsteadily, his throat clicking. His mouth did that _. He_ did that, as part of a bizarre sequence of events not even Dee’s psychic could have predicted. He did that, but he didn’t even get Dennis’s shirt off – he’s had his hands on Dennis’s dick but he hasn’t laid down with him naked. He doesn’t even know if the backs of Dennis’s knees are as soft to the touch as he’d always thought they would be.

It seems absurd in hindsight. He should have done better. He should have roundhouse kicked the door open and called a cab, found them somewhere with a bed. He should have taken their damn shirts off – they were still wearing _socks_ , for God’s sake. He should have taken everything he could get.

Some of what he’s thinking must show up in his expression because Dennis’s anger softens as they look at each other, although it doesn’t totally dissipate. He sighs, rolling his eyes, and brings Mac down carefully for the gentlest, smallest kiss they’ve shared yet, just a silent brush of lips. Then he pushes Mac back, throws back the sleeping bag and coat nest and levers himself up with a groan, the jerking and elongating motions of his body like a puppet set free of strings. Dee shakes her head in judgment as he stands there rolling his shoulders, stretching out his back gingerly.

Mac just lies where he fell for a second. He’d thought maybe – he’d wondered whether he’d wake up and feel the same, and Dennis would feel different, might say they’d made a mistake. It had seemed like a reasonable concern.

But – Dennis turns to him and holds out a hand. He raises an eyebrow.

‘You getting up or what?’

Mac takes his hand and lets himself be pulled up. Maybe it wasn’t reasonable after all. Maybe, Mac thinks as Dennis lets his hand linger for a second after he’s pulled Mac upright, he has a whole other set of things to worry about now.

\---

They have to get a cab back to the apartment so they can shower and change before they head back to work, but they hound Dee until she forks out for it, so it’s not all bad. After all, it _is_ technically her fault.

‘There’s no way they picked up on it, bro,’ Dennis reassures him as they drive back to the bar, soft lyrical stylings of Steve Winwood accompanying them on the CD player. _A yearning, and it's real to me,_ he croons. _There must be someone who's feeling for me._

Dennis taps out the rhythm on the steering wheel. He’d flicked straight to ‘Higher Love’ when they got in the Range Rover, a gleam in his eye. Mac hadn’t protested, watching the way Dennis’s mouth formed the lyrics silently. It’s a good song.

‘Are you sure, dude?’ Mac asks, frowning out at the traffic. ‘We were all spooned up there when they found us this morning. It was pretty incriminating.’

‘We’ve been in tons of incriminating situations before and they’ve never called us out on it. What makes this time any different?’

Mac looks down at his hands in his lap, a laugh bubbling up in his chest.

‘Yeah,’ he says unsteadily. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Dennis flick a glance his way. ‘But do you think maybe all those times they did get it, and they were kind of just waiting for us to figure it out? And now we have? ‘Cause I think they’re gonna know, like, immediately, dude. I’m a terrible liar and I can’t keep a secret for shit.’

‘It’ll be fine, Mac,’ Dennis says, reaching over to squeeze Mac’s knee reassuringly. Mac looks over at him, hand dropping from his mouth where he’d been gnawing on a fingernail. ‘If we just carry on like everything’s normal, there’ll be no reason for them to suspect anything’s changed.’

‘Well, that’s not normal, right there,’ Mac points out, putting his hand over Dennis’s and weaving their fingers together. His heart trips up in his chest at the sight.

Dennis gives a quick laugh and squeezes again before he pulls his hand back, frowning for a split second before his forehead evens out.

‘Right,’ he laughs again, gaze darting to Mac and away again. ‘So I guess we just. Won’t do stuff like that in front of the gang, okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says slowly, something churning in his stomach. ‘Why, though?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why don’t you want to tell them?’

Dennis sighs, fidgeting in his seat.

‘Do we have to talk about it?’

‘Yep,’ says Mac, folding his arms across his chest. ‘We sure do, Dennis.’

‘Fine, God.’

They pull up to a stop sign and Dennis turns to Mac, the set of his mouth tense.

‘I think we should just keep it – you know,’ he gestures at nothing, fingers curled into claws. He sighs out an exasperated breath. ‘You know how they are, all irritating and shit, it’ll be a whole thing if they know about it, and I don’t want this to turn into the scam of the week, okay? They’re not getting their grubby fingerprints all over it.’

‘Scam of the week?’ Mac repeats thoughtfully. Warmth is blooming in his chest. Of all possible answers, he didn’t expect this one.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis shrugs, avoiding his eyes. ‘You know they’d try and get all involved and,’ he mimes crumpling something up in his fist, ‘crush it into a tiny little ball of pain and misery like they do with everything else, so let’s just not, okay?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know if they’d want anything to do with it, dude,’ Mac remarks, leaning back against his seat with a sigh, trying and failing to get comfortable. His back’s still aching like he had five Dennises sat on top of him yesterday instead of just one. ‘I’ve been talking to Charlie about it for months and all he ever wants me to do is shut up.’

‘You’ve been talking to Charlie about this?’ Dennis asks, focusing on Mac now with a frown. ‘Charlie Kelly is the man you went to for relationship advice? What kind of piss-poor operation were you running here, Mac?’

‘That’s taking it out of context,’ Mac protests. ‘It was a whole thing, I didn’t even really get that it was – you know what, let’s just move past it, we can talk about that later, let’s just –’

‘Right, right. We gotta focus. We’ll come back to it later, though, ‘cause I’ve got some questions about that,’ Dennis frowns, shaking his head. ‘So – no telling the rest of the gang?’

‘No telling the rest of the gang,’ Mac confirms. ‘For now, anyway.’

‘Because it’s just for us,’ Dennis says firmly.

Whether it’s a trick of the light or something less easily explained by the laws of the natural world, his cheeks are flushing a light pink under his make-up. He clears his throat with something clearly intended to seem like nonchalance and stares hard through the windscreen. Mac smiles down at his hands.

‘Yeah,’ he says softly. Dennis’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel. ‘Just for us, Den.’

Dennis’s eyes flicker over to him and away again. He opens his mouth to say something just as some asshole beeps his horn behind them, and his jaw drops with outrage.

‘Who the hell is this asshole?’ he snaps, craning around to glare. ‘Trying to have a goddamn moment here – hey, idiot! Yeah, I’m talking to you!’

‘No, no, no, just peel off, dude, peel off,’ Mac cuts in quickly, ‘you can’t get any more tickets, Dennis –’

‘It’s a matter of principle, Mac,’ Dennis says, still glaring. ‘Look, what’ve we got in the foot well – what do we have to throw?’

‘Drive, drive, drive,’ Mac mutters as the guy behind emerges from his car. He looks like he might be a relation of the Maniac, although that’s just a hunch based on the crazed look in his eye rather than any direct resemblance. He’s about a foot taller than the Maniac, after all.

Dennis clocks him and pales.

‘Oh shit,’ he whispers.

‘Uh huh,’ Mac replies.

Without saying another word, Dennis pulls away with a screech of tires.

‘That dude had to be like, six five _easy,_ ’ Mac is saying as he pushes open the door to the bar. ‘I’m telling you, man, I wanna know what supplements he’s taking.’

‘Well, that wouldn’t affect his height, Mac,’ Dennis replies, frowning as he goes on ahead. ‘You know growth hormones don’t target –’

He stops dead a few steps into the bar and Mac nearly walks right into the back of him.

‘What’s up, dude? Why’d you – _oh_.’

It could be a picture next to the dictionary definition of ‘caught in the act’. Dee is frozen in place, clearly in the middle of making a presentation, easel out with the pointer in hand while Charlie and Frank are seated in front, twisted round in their seats to stare at Mac and Dennis. The chairs are arranged in four neat rows. The easel simply has the words ‘BANG PAD???’ written on it in neat block letters.

‘I see court is in session,’ Dennis says between gritted teeth, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring. ‘So kind of you to wait for us, Dee.’

‘You’re holding court without us?’ Mac asks in disbelief and not a little hurt. ‘Not cool, guys.’

Charlie scratches at the back of his neck, avoiding their eyes.

‘Well, we thought it might be kind of a conflict of interest, seeing as the case is about –’

‘ _Charlie_ ,’ Dee interrupts meaningfully, glaring. She turns back to Mac and Dennis with a strained smile. ‘We thought you’d be, uh,’ she waves a hand between them vaguely, ‘occupied. For longer. Than this.’

‘Why would we be occupied?’ Mac asks, mystified. ‘All we had to do was go home and shower. And anyway, why would you need us to be?’

‘Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter,’ Dee says quickly. ‘The point is, you’re here now, and we’re clearly not going to get rid of you, so just sit down and shut up. You can be witnesses or something.’

‘Witnesses to what?’ Dennis asks as they file down the centre aisle and get seated.

‘Deandra’s filing for dissolution of the California King Bed agreement,’ Frank explains. ‘On the grounds of you two banging.’

The room goes quiet. Everything slows down a little, even Mac’s heartbeat – stillness before an explosion. An instinctive denial zips up his throat and hovers on the tip of his tongue. This is the moment when he could say something; this is the moment when he gets to take it back. It might as well be wearing a neon sign. This is the last moment to speak up, if he really wants to get back in with God. This is it.

Mac counts the empty seconds as they go by – ten, eleven, twelve. The protest dies on his tongue; he says nothing. Relief blooms in his chest at the realisation that he isn’t going to. Whatever happens next, he can’t talk himself out of this one. He can’t pretend this too will pass. And fuck, it’s a lot to deal with the morning after he just touched a dick for the first time but can he really, honestly pretend to be surprised? It’s not a choice he’s making here as much as it’s the slow inexorable slide of the last puzzle piece falling into place. It reminds him of how it felt to flick on the light switch in Paddy’s for the first time, back when it was even darker and dingier than it is now, grimy around the windowpanes with neglect and dust – like walking into something scary and new and old with Dennis and surveying it with excitement because now it was _theirs,_ for good or bad. The knowledge sinks deep into his stomach: _this is yours._

He turns to Dennis to share this breakthrough but Dennis seems to be having his own form of internal conflict: he’s turning a vibrant shade of purple-pink, about fifteen different contradictory responses backing up in his throat if the bulging muscles of his neck are any indication. Mac thinks about it, gives it another second, then mentally shrugs and leans in to bump his shoulder.

‘Looks like they picked up on it after all, Dennis,’ he says conversationally, as if it’s just the two of them. It’s always best to distract Dennis from potential witnesses to catastrophe when he’s like this; he’s ten times less likely to fly off the handle if he’s focused on Mac, and Mac alone.

Dennis’s mouth goes thin and white, but his nostrils start flaring in anger which is a plus – at least he’s breathing properly again. He lets out a long, controlled exhale through his gritted teeth.

‘Yeah,’ he says, short and loud. ‘Sure does seem like it.’

‘Well, maybe it’s for the best,’ Mac says philosophically. Dennis makes a frustrated questioning noise. Mac shrugs. ‘Think about it, dude. How were we going to keep it a secret for like, any length of time at all? We live with Dee, and we see Charlie and Frank every single day.’

There’s another tense moment where Mac can just _sense_ Charlie or one of the others is about to say something incredibly unhelpful – but before they get a chance, Dennis blows out a long, slow breath.

‘Alright,’ he says abruptly. His face is starting to return to its usual colour. ‘But none of you will be arbitrating anything, okay? None of you get to have any say in what happens, or where it happens, or who does what. This isn’t like, suddenly everyone’s thing, you got it? This is _mine_. It’s not a group activity.’

‘Yeah!’ Mac whoops. ‘Well, ours. It’s mine too, Dennis.’

‘Yeah, sure, yours too,’ Dennis capitulates with a shrug.

‘No one’s trying to take it off you, drama queen,’ Dee rolls her eyes. ‘I just don’t want to sleep in the same bed as two grown men who are in a sexual relationship.’

‘Hand on the knee,’ Charlie yells, pointing at where Dennis’s hand has settled on Mac’s knee again, apparently of its own volition. Dennis glares at him but doesn’t move it, although he looks a little rattled to have it drawn attention to. Mac has the feeling he might be beaming at a much brighter wattage than the gesture warrants, but he’s too happy to care. ‘We have a hand on the knee, ladies and gentlemen and judge and jury of the court! I move for this to be considered concrete evidence of banging and relationship-type shenanigans.’

‘We literally just admitted to it, Charlie,’ Mac frowns at him. ‘Were you even listening?’

‘Yeah, yeah, we got it, Charlie,’ Frank nods, rolling his eyes. ‘We got it, it’s been counted. Now back to the closing arguments. What are we thinking here, Dee? We thinking some kind of twin bed type situation? ‘Cause I can call up my bed guy. Might be a bit of a squeeze in that tiny apartment of yours, though.’

‘Well, if you recall, before these two entered the courtroom and created such a distraction,’ Dee glares at them, ‘I was making the very good point that when we first entered into the bet, Mac and Dennis weren’t banging yet. Sleeping in a bed with two dudes who are banging is totally different to sleeping in a bed with two single dudes.’

‘Two dudes who are banging and old black man,’ Mac reminds her.

‘And old black man,’ she nods.

‘Is that homophobic?’ Charlie asks, face screwed up as he contemplates the thought. ‘Saying they’re different now ‘cause they’re a couple?’

Dee rolls her eyes.

‘C’mon, you know that’s not what I meant.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Mac says. ‘I mean, she’s right, it is kinda different.’

He turns to Dennis, tapping him rapidly on the shoulder.

‘Hey, dude, if _we_ say something isn’t homophobic, then it can’t be, right? We’ve got the final vote on that now.’

‘That’s pretty cool,’ Dennis allows. ‘Like the race card. It’s an instant argument winner.’

‘Right!’

‘Um,’ Dee interjects, waving her arms around to get their attention, ‘anyway. Like I was saying. I move to dissolve the California King Bed agreement on the grounds that the situation’s totally changed. There’s no way I would have agreed to the bet if they’d been in a sexual relationship at the time, so I shouldn’t have to go along with it now. In summary, you assholes can’t force me to sleep with Mac and Dennis anymore, ha!’

She points at them each individually, clearly under the impression it’s an open and shut case.

‘Now hold on just a second, Dee,’ Mac says slowly. ‘It occurs to me that you’re being pretty sparing with the details of _how_ myself and Dennis came to our current relationship status.’

Dee frowns at him. Dennis squints, clearly intrigued to hear this rationale himself.

‘Huh?’

‘Well, we only banged last night – and only like, half-banged at that –’

‘Too much information, dude,’ Charlie interrupts, looking a little ill. Mac waves him off.

‘Shut up, bro – we only did it because you and Charlie locked us in here overnight to make us resolve our “issues”. So you’re the one who actually instigated this whole situation in the first place. _You’re_ the one to blame for this change in circumstances.’

He sits back in his seat, dusting off his hands. Dennis laughs, eyes bright with delight as he throws Mac a high five.

Dee opens and closes her mouth without a single sound coming out.

‘He’s got you there, Deandra,’ Frank remarks.

‘No, no, no,’ Dee chants, backing up against the easel and wagging her finger at them. ‘Oh, no he does not, Frank. You sons of bitches are _not_ pinning this one on me. You could see this coming from a mile away, come on! We all did! Everyone knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. All me and Charlie did was – give them the opportunity!’

‘Be that as it may, sis, the fact remains that you’re the one who locked us in a room together for twelve hours and forced us into booth-banging,’ Dennis tells her gravely. ‘The blame lies at your feet.’

‘And Charlie!’ Dee barks, pointing at Charlie, who throws up his hands like she’s holding a gun. ‘It was Charlie’s idea too! The blame should be evenly distributed between mine and Charlie’s feet!’

‘When did feet get into this?’ Frank wonders aloud. ‘One of youse got a foot fetish?’

‘Booth-banging?’ Charlie asks, looking morbidly fascinated. ‘Dude, gross. Which one?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ Mac says smugly. Dennis bumps his shoulder and grins. ‘Anyway, if we were to dissolve the agreement, what does that mean for me and Dennis? Where are we going to sleep? We can’t go back to the hammock and floor arrangement, dude, that was hell on my back.’

‘Yeah, there’s no way I’m getting back in that hammock,’ Dennis agrees. ‘Not in a million years. You know I have so many more nightmares about falling now?’

‘Really, dude? ‘Cause I’ve started having this dream that –’

‘You would sleep _in your own home_ ,’ Dee groans. ‘For the love of God! In your own goddamn apartment, assholes!’

‘Now there’s an idea,’ says Frank, leaning across the back of his seat to aim his words directly at Mac and Dennis. ‘Seeing as Deandra’s the one who caused all this and then kicked up a fuss about it, how about’s she pays for your apartment to be redone?’

Dee makes a series of wordless protesting gestures.

‘Works for me,’ Dennis nods. ‘Mac?’

‘Yeah, I’m good with that, that seems to make sense.’

‘ _No_ ,’ Dee shouts, ‘no it does _not_ make sense, Jesus fucking Christ –’

‘What would you rather we do, Dee?’ Mac asks. ‘Continue to sleep in the same bed as you and just also be banging?’

‘You can’t be together if we’re all still sleeping in the same bed,’ Dee hisses through gritted teeth. ‘You just can’t, Mac, and that’s it.’

The tone of her voice is so final Mac wonders if they’ve finally run up against her hard limit; only took three decades and a shit ton of emotional battery. You have to admire her stamina.

‘Um, yes we can,’ he argues. ‘We can do whatever we want, Dee.’

Dennis high fives him again. Being part of a couple is awesome.

Dee’s response is more like a strangled series of noises than real words. Mac shoves his fingers in his ears until she’s done, shaking his head sorrowfully.

‘Who’s the judge here anyway?’ he asks Charlie. ‘I motion to remove Dee from the courtroom for unsightly behaviour!’

‘I’m the judge,’ Frank pipes up. ‘I think. We were a little short on staff without the two of you.’

‘Well, I hope that teaches you a valuable lesson,’ Dennis says primly, ‘not to conduct trials without us.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac adds. ‘So where did we land on the whole California King Bed issue? Is Dee paying to refurbish our apartment or what?’

‘Oh, right, yeah,’ Frank says, and bangs the gavel while Dee falls to her knees and screams.

\---

According to the workmen Dee contracts with the sorest expression Mac’s ever seen on the face of a loser, it’ll take up to four weeks to complete the rebuilding work.

‘I guess it was gutted by fire like, twice in a row,’ Mac says glumly the day after she gets the quote, head pillowed in Dennis’s lap on the couch. ‘Still kinda sucks though.’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis mumbles, running his fingers through Mac’s hair. He’s got a real boner for Mac leaving it loose and ungelled for some reason, can’t stop messing with it. Yesterday he used it to steer Mac to his neck when they were making out and Mac nearly had a heart attack.

‘We can’t let her furnish it, dude,’ Mac frets, shifting to stare up at Dennis, who doesn’t look like he’s paying attention at all. He’s staring at his own hands sifting through Mac’s hair, hypnotised like he’s watching Bob Ross or the dancing guy on public access. ‘She’ll get us like the worst furniture in the world out of spite. I bet she’d buy us like, a water bed.’

Dennis snaps out of it at that, meeting his eyes as a synchronised shiver passes through them both.

‘You know how easy it is to poke a hole in one of those things?’

‘Like bursting a balloon,’ Mac replies grimly. ‘Where is she this afternoon anyway? She’s been so paranoid about leaving us alone here since the arbitration, I thought she’d never leave.’

‘Who cares?’ Dennis asks. He smirks, yanking gently on Mac’s hair until he gets the point and sits up, swaying close to Dennis’s mouth on reflex. ‘Let’s just enjoy it, huh?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac breathes out against his lips and the word blurs into a kiss, a soft punctuation. Dennis slots kisses more easily into their conversations than Mac could have imagined. It reminds him of when Dennis used to touch him all the time, before he got all antsy and frustrated and started keeping his distance, resentful of everything Mac wouldn’t say. He kisses Mac like he’s throwing an arm around his shoulder, like a hand in the small of his back. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising considering how long they’ve known each other but Dennis has never been like this with a girl – Mac would remember. It must be because they were best friends first.

His hands squeeze around Dennis’s waist at the thought; Dennis squirms, making a pleased sound into Mac’s mouth, biting on his bottom lip until Mac hisses. He shoulders his way over Dennis, nudging him insistently until he slides down with a begrudging sound at odds with the boner digging into Mac’s hip. He wiggles down until he’s horizontal on the couch and Mac is hovering over him, propped up on his elbows. He lets Dennis break off on a pant, watches from an inch away as Dennis’s tongue darts out and licks his lips, curves in a dark smile. He wonders how long it will take to get used to this: Dennis looking at him as if Mac is allowed to touch – as if he’s a little impatient for it, even. Alternately teasing and withholding was always more Dennis’s style; being handed the keys to the kingdom leaves Mac instinctively bracing for them to be taken away.

‘It’s crazy how few wrinkles you have,’ Dennis mutters, stroking his fingertips over Mac’s cheekbones, thumbs brushing under his eyes. ‘You don’t even moisturise or anything and you look like thirty, tops.’

Mac can’t stop the wide smile that blooms on his face at that; he has to duck down, hide it in Dennis’s hand.

‘Aw,’ Dennis says, nudging Mac’s chin back up to look at him. He grins triumphantly, teeth flashing sharp. ‘Hey, you’ve got some when you smile. Guess you’re human after all.’

Mac rolls his eyes.

‘Shut up,’ he says and kisses Dennis again. Dennis winds his arms around Mac’s neck with a contented sigh that settles in Mac’s chest like an unexploded landmine. He wants to pull back and start stripping off some clothes but it seems rude to even try when Dennis’s fingers are gripping the back of his neck like that. Mac’s hands twitch around his hips. He doesn’t know how to do this. How are you supposed to do this when you’re going to see the person more than once? How do you go about it when you know you’re going to wake up next to them tomorrow, because they’re your best friend?

‘Uh, Den,’ he says when they part for breath, ‘do you want – we can still do monthly dinner and stuff now, right?’

Dennis blinks hard at him, clearly trying to make sense of the words through the hormone-drenched fog they’ve been slipping in and out of for the last few days. His mouth parts slightly and he shifts his hips, rearranging them a little. Mac takes a hard swallow at that but resolves to remain on task.

‘Well, yeah,’ Dennis frowns at him. ‘Why wouldn’t we? I mean, one of the great things about this, Mac, is that we can actually do even more of that now.’

‘We can?’ Mac lights up. ‘More monthly dinners?’

‘Yeah, dude! Well, we can’t have more than one monthly dinner a month, but we could have like, weekly dinner –’

‘Like date night!’ Mac says enthusiastically. ‘Oh my god, dude, like _Predator_ Tuesday and monthly dinner rolled into one, and every week!’

‘Sure,’ Dennis shrugs, rolling his eyes a little. ‘We might want to branch out a little from _Predator_ and Guigino’s eventually, though. That’s the beauty of this arrangement, Mac! The possibilities are endless. Think about it – we were already living together, and going out for dinner and movies and stuff. Now we get to just keep doing all that, but with sex also.’

‘Nice,’ Mac says, brain snagging on ‘arrangement’. He feels like there must be more separating a relationship from just sex with a friend, but maybe it’s all a matter of perspective. If it was just sex with a friend, he probably wouldn’t have woken up for the last three days with a grin on his face, thinking about how happy he is that he’s going to be with Dennis until they die.

Maybe he’ll just keep that one to himself for now.

He frowns.

‘Hey, we never did land on what we were going to call each other.’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis agrees vaguely, but Mac has suspicions he’s not as focused on this conversation now they’ve established date night can be a thing. His gaze has drifted down to Mac’s biceps and seems to have gotten stuck there, his thumb stroking over the feather tat with a slow, even rhythm. Mac takes the opportunity to flex, and Dennis jumps slightly. Mac smirks at him.

‘Shut up,’ Dennis mutters, yanking him down to kiss again. Mac melts into it. Dennis can call him whatever he likes, and probably will.

Dennis doesn’t capitulate to Mac’s weight over him as much as he encourages it; he opens his legs as wide as they’ll go allowing for the confines of the couch, pulling Mac down with his grasping hands until Mac is situated firmly in the cradle of his hips. He shivers every time Mac slides his hand up the underside of his thigh where he’s gripping around Mac’s waist. The closer Mac gets to his ass, the more Dennis tilts his hips upwards, the more he clings, until Mac pulls back with a gasp and starts wrestling with the fly on Dennis’s jeans purely out of a sense of self-preservation: if he doesn’t get his hands on Dennis’s thighs soon, he’s going to scream.

‘You too, you too,’ Dennis mumbles, yanking at the hem of Mac’s shirt.

‘Fine, whatever,’ Mac sighs, pulling his shirt over his head and immediately setting back down to yank Dennis’s jeans over his hips. They haven’t had more than a minute alone in the few days since they were locked in the bar overnight, or at least that’s what it feels like: one of the gang always popping up to interrupt them, Dee determinedly inserting herself and old black man between them in the California king bed until their apartment’s ready. They’ve had no time to indulge this, whatever skin hungry clamour is taking them over. Dennis has been yanking at Mac ever since he figured out how much fun he could have with the payoff, obviously – skimming his hand over Mac’s ass when they brush past each other in the bar, smirking when Mac’s eyes locked onto his lips around a straw yesterday.

Dennis doesn’t even like using straws! It was obvious and tacky and total bullshit, but none of that had stopped Mac tugging him into the back office with gritted teeth, it hadn’t stopped Dennis grinning against Mac’s mouth when he shoved Dennis up against the wall and ground against him, and it hadn’t stopped Dennis laughing into Mac’s open mouth. The gang had called them on it after ten minutes anyway, hammering on the wall and hollering a reminder about the no-sex-in-the-back room rule that was pretty hard to ignore, even through a lockable door.

Dennis isn’t laughing now; he isn’t laughing at all, panting and scrabbling at Mac’s waistband like this, his mouth wide and open and hungry.

‘Jesus, you’re going to –’

Mac breaks off, taking the initiative. He leans up and off Dennis, yanking his pants and socks off with lightning speed. Dennis wriggles out of his while still lying on the couch, apparently unwilling to get up. His movements slow down while he stares at Mac undressing, but he doesn’t have much of an opportunity to hold up the proceedings because Mac yanks his jeans off over his ankles and lies directly back down on top of him again.

‘Ow, you elbowed me,’ Dennis accuses.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Mac mutters, and sets about yanking Dennis’s leg up over his hip and grinding down to find out if the friction is as sweet as he anticipated. Dennis’s groan agrees with him that _yes_ , and Mac opens his mouth to make some kind of comment about it but before he can Dennis is kissing him again, an open-mouthed panting thing, fingernails scratching down Mac’s back and setting off shivery sparks along the few nerves that aren’t reporting directly to Mac’s dick. Mac’s fingers skitter down the back of Dennis’s thigh and meet the curve of his ass. Dennis shivers and backs into it, breath catching when Mac squeezes.

They set up a rhythm that disconnects Mac from any awareness of time; they could have been grinding on the couch since God created the earth as far as he’s concerned. The friction isn’t enough to get them there but it’s enough to keep them sweetly, torturously turned on; Dennis’s skin is so hot, the flush in his cheeks spreading down and across his chest as Mac grinds steadily into the hollow between thigh and groin. Mac darts down from his mouth to dot kisses over Dennis’s chest and skates across a nipple. Dennis blows out a shaky breath and clutches at the back of Mac’s head, fingers spasmodically tightening and releasing like he can’t decide if he wants to yank him away or push him down harder.

‘Fuck,’ he breathes out, ‘fuck, Mac.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Mac blinks up at him, mouth twitching in a smirk. Too easy. ‘That’s kind of the idea.’

‘Um,’ Dennis frowns, propping himself up on his elbows. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘No, no, no, Den,’ Mac says, pulling back a little to glare. ‘ _You’re_ not serious.’

He thinks he’s entitled to sound a little whiny at this point. He literally just figured out that he’s wanted to fuck Dennis for the entire duration of his adult life, only for Dennis to promptly erect a NO ENTRY sign around his lower half as if he has any virtue left for Mac to steal. 

Dennis just gapes at him, apparently totally serious.

‘Mac, we can’t – you’re not fucking me for the first time on Dee’s shitty couch, come on, be real.’

‘Jesus Christ, dude – I’m not fucking you for the first time in the bar, I’m not doing it on Dee’s couch, where _am_ I gonna be doing it?’

Dennis’s eyes narrow. He reels up in a flash to fasten a hand around the back of Mac’s neck and yank them close together. His words drift along Mac’s jaw when he speaks, soft and low.

‘You’re going to fuck me for the first time in our apartment, Mac,’ he murmurs. ‘You’re going to do it in our brand-new bed, on brand-new sheets, with mood lighting and a goddamn fucking bathroom that we don’t share with two other people less than twelve feet away. You’re going to come inside me and it’s going to be the premier sexual experience of your life so far, is that clear?’

‘Jesus Christ, Dennis,’ Mac says weakly. If he wasn’t already desensitised after an age of grinding that probably would have finished him off. Dennis tugs on a lock of hair. ‘Ow! Fuck, yes, asshole, it’s clear.’

‘Good,’ Dennis says smugly, planting a delicate kiss on the underside of Mac’s jaw and lying back down with a smile. ‘Now get back to what you were doing.’

God help him, Mac does.

\---

The TV is on. The TV is on, and it’s gang movie night, and they’re watching _Seabiscuit_ because Dee wants to research period dramas for her role in that historical film and Charlie wanted to see some horses. They’re crammed into Dee’s apartment under blankets and swigging Irish coffee from a giant Thermos and Charlie is sat on the couch, blissfully unaware, between Mac and Dennis and the sexual tension they’re hauling around like a tote bag with one strap on each of their shoulders.

Charlie’s eating popcorn and watching Seabiscuit gallop with a happy smile on his face, and Mac wants to turf him off the couch and crawl into Dennis’s lap. Today Dennis cut limes behind the bar for half an hour and pulled absentminded faces at the sour taste while he licked the trailing lime juice off his fingers and the palms of his hands, tongue stretching pink and obscene when he caught a drop escaping down his wrist. Then he noticed Mac was staring at him, and he got that half-delighted, half-malicious look in his eye and turned calculating in the space of a second, the flick of his tongue over his wrist delicate and tracing. He sucked his juice covered fingers down like he was trying to scratch the back of his throat, pulling off with a slick pop, keeping dead eye contact with Mac as he licked his lips.

Then he’d straightened up, brushing back his hair with a calm flick of the wrist. He didn’t even flinch at the taste, although Mac knew he would’ve winced at that much sourness, but then again he didn’t flinch at a dart through the palm of his hand either. That holding Mac’s attention apparently bears just as complete a demonstration of his bodily stamina as winning a game of CharDee MacDennis is an arresting thought, but Mac doesn’t have much time to explore it because he’s too busy trying to stop all the blood in his body redirecting to his dick.

‘Can you grab me some Tupperware from the back office, Mac?’ Dennis asked, without a trace of shame. He blinked his big blue eyes innocently, and Mac’s hands flatten shaky and scratching against the denim of his jeans. ‘C’mon, man, don’t want the limes to go bad.’

Mac glared at him, mute, and went to get the damn Tupperware.

The thing is, Mac _knows_ it’s a ploy – he knows Dennis looks up at Mac from under his eyelashes, gaze heavy-lidded and sweet, because he knows he looks good like that, and that Mac has enough trouble resisting him at the worst of times, never mind the best. Mac doesn’t doubt that Dennis has calculated the precise trajectory from the swipe of his tongue across his lips to the helpless curling of Mac’s hands into fists. Three people have had their wallets stolen in the bar in the last week because Mac’s observational skills have abandoned ship to take up residence in the wave of Dennis’s hair, carefully sculpted to the curve of his ear.

Four days ago he walked in on Dennis practicing applying lipstick in the men’s room, his mouth forming a perfect O as he lined his lips carefully with a dark, faintly shimmering pink. His eyes were bright and intent on the YouTube tutorial playing on his phone until they’d flickered to Mac in the mirror and he looked caught, briefly, a fish on a hook – and then his mouth curled upwards and he leaned forward with his hand resting on the sink, his back an arched line. The video chirped away and Mac stood frozen, swallowing repeatedly while Dennis smirked and smirked and deliberately slid the lipstick over the carefully defined boundaries of his mouth.

The worst part of it was that Mac could see his own dumbstruck expression in the mirror, the way his own jaw dropped with a theatricality that might as well have been audible, the bob of his throat as he ran out of air. That’s probably what he looks like most of the time now. Or maybe that’s what he always did look like when Dennis did confusingly sexy stuff in front of him, and now he’s just recognising it for what it is. Doesn’t make much difference either way; if he’d been under the impression that introducing sex into their relationship might redress the power balance between them then you only needed to catch them in the same room together now to realise that had been a pipe dream. Maybe it’ll be different when they can actually fuck, when Mac can actually _show_ Dennis how much he wants, how good he can do it for him – 

Or maybe that’ll just turn into another stick Dennis can throw for Mac. Mac is beyond ready to find out.

Right now, in fact, Dennis has his hand stretched out, ever so casually, across the back of the couch; his fingers are stretched out toward Mac although his eyes are studiously trained on the TV. Mac leans forward and takes a casual handful of popcorn but Charlie doesn’t even stir, totally focused on the movie, taking quiet slurps of coffee. Mac fakes a yawn and stretches his arm across the back of the couch until the tingle of Dennis’s fingers brushes his. They fumble briefly, static tripping along the rising hairs of Mac’s arms, Dennis’s thumb clumsily stroking his hand; they catch and interlock in a firm, undeniable grasp. Dennis squeezes once, hard.

Mac passes the next few scenes of the movie smiling stupidly at the TV. He couldn’t tell you what was happening or which damn horse was which but he doesn’t care. Dennis is holding his hand. If anyone looks around, they’re going to spot it immediately and Dennis will probably pull back first but until then he’s the one who reached out. Dennis, who always touches people before they can touch him first but always, always to a purpose. The skim of his thumb across the soft underside of Mac’s wrist. What purpose is that serving?

‘See, I just don’t get it,’ Dee’s saying, clearly perplexed. She’s sat on the comfy chair, penned in by old black man and Frank on dining chairs on either side, look significantly less content than Charlie to be stuck in the middle. Dennis thinks she’s still sore about refurbishing their apartment but Mac keeps pointing out that the dissolution of the agreement means she won’t have to sleep with old black man anymore either when they move out, so really, she should be thanking them.

They haven’t volunteered this information to Dee yet, though.

She gestures at the screen wildly. ‘They’re clearly demon-creatures. Look at that one’s rolling eyes! Demon! Clearly a demon!’

‘Horses are beautiful, majestic creatures, Dee,’ Charlie says peaceably. ‘Like my main man, Peter Nincompoop.’

‘You haven’t seen Peter Nincompoop for like nine years, Charlie,’ Mac rolls his eyes. He pats Charlie on the shoulder with his free hand. ‘Time to let that one go, dude.’

‘Nope,’ Charlie says, popping the ‘p’ belligerently. ‘One day we’ll be reunited, and on that day, you can all suck my dick.’

‘Ew,’ Dennis pulls a face.

‘Yeah, no thanks, Charlie,’ Mac concurs.

‘What, you a one-dick kinda guy?’ Frank asks, then snorts at the look on Mac’s face.

Dennis’s hand twitches in Mac’s grasp. Mac resists the urge to cling.

‘Guess so, Frank,’ Mac drawls, rolling his eyes with pantomime irritation. He doesn’t look at Dennis. Trust Frank to pinpoint the elephant in the room. Whether or not they’re exclusive just – hasn’t come up yet, that’s all. And if there’s something skittering and fragile inside Mac that hides at the thought of bringing it up, then that’s his problem. Isn’t it kind of implied, anyway? What with how they’re living together and everything?

That never stopped Dennis from bringing girls back before, a worried voice pipes up in the back of his mind. Mac spent too many nights white knuckling it on the couch, frozen in his seat listening to the creaking of bedsprings and Dennis’s prolonged, elaborate moans, to forget about that.

He tries to brush it off, something contracting painfully in his stomach. That was before they were together. Dennis wouldn’t do that to him. Right?

‘It wasn’t a literal invitation, dude,’ Charlie fires back, mercifully interrupting Mac’s train of thought.

‘Yeah,’ Mac laughs, a little too hard with relief. He still hasn’t looked at Dennis but in that way where it’s probably incredibly obvious. His eyes are straining with the effort not to check his peripheral vision. ‘That’s reserved for the waitress, am I right?’

 ‘Yeah,’ Charlie says after a beat too long. ‘Yeah, of course.’

Dennis turns slightly in Mac’s direction; permission granted. He flashes Mac a bewildered look over Charlie’s head and Mac shrugs, mystified. Maybe Charlie’s obsession with the waitress is in one of its quiet phases, but it’s still a universal constant, like Dee’s periodic vows to finally get her acting career off the ground and Frank’s insistence that he’s not getting too old for their schemes. Then again, Mac would have said the same thing about him and Dennis a few weeks ago, would have jumped up all defensive if anyone had ever asked and said that some friendships are just special, okay – some things are indefinable and lie outside clearly intelligible categories of ‘friend’ and ‘partner’ and that’s okay, and everyone should just shut up and stop asking questions.

And look how that turned out.

In Charlie’s case, though, this is a quiet phase going on for like a year now. Mac can’t remember the last time Charlie got hit up about the restraining order, come to think of it. Maybe imagining Charlie without the waitress isn’t that huge a jump after all: maybe it’s been happening for months, right in front of them. 

They’re pretty silent for the rest of the movie. Dee doesn’t even complain about the horses; she doesn’t even whine when old black man skips out when she’s on a bathroom break and goes to bed early to snag the best spot. Charlie seizes his empty place on the chair next to Dee, giving Mac and Dennis’s joined hands the evil eye, but Dee doesn’t even pause when she gets back into the room. She just sidles up and slots back into her seat without even blinking. She doesn’t even shove Charlie’s outstretched arm off the back of her chair. She looks kind of smug about it, actually.

Dennis shoots Mac another glance, eyebrows raised, and Mac nods mysteriously like he’s paying attention, but mostly he’s focused on how their joined hands have fallen naturally into the space Charlie left behind on the couch, resting on the cushion, still firmly interlinked.

\---

‘We can’t get that headboard, dude. Look how flimsy it is! We’d bang it to pieces like the first time we have sex.’

Dennis groans and buries his head in his hands right there in the bedroom furnishings aisle. He gets real theatrical with it, too; his tortured exhale blows his curls out across his forehead.

‘Mac,’ he mumbles. ‘Mac. Baby. Oh my God. Will you _please_ stop talking so loudly about how we’re going to bang all the furniture to pieces the minute we get it home? I think you’re scaring the sales staff.’

Mac sighs like this is a total exaggeration but he did see that last girl duck wide-eyed behind a forest of rolled up rugs about five minutes ago. Maybe Dennis has a point.

‘Fine,’ he mutters. ‘But we’re getting the baseball lampshade.’

He points at Dennis seriously; on this condition he will not bend.

‘Of course we’re getting the baseball lampshade, dude, that’s not even an argument.’ Dennis replies, smiling as he bumps Mac’s shoulder. Mac high-fives him.

‘We made a good call buying our own furniture, Dennis, even if it is expensive,’ he says happily, surveying their cart so far. ‘All the stuff we’ve picked is like way more better than what Dee would’ve picked out.’

‘No argument there either,’ Dennis snorts. ‘She’s got all the taste of a kindergartener and even less self-restraint.’

‘I know, dude. Like, who needs that many dream catchers above their bed? I doubt she even has that many dreams, her brain’s too busy obsessing about like Josh Groban and shit.’

Dennis snorts.

‘Oh, but she does have dreams, Mac, remember? She tells us all about them, even when we don’t care. _Especially_ when we don’t care.’

‘Those dream catchers should be working a little harder,’ Mac says grimly. ‘Then she wouldn’t remember ‘em to tell us.’

‘If girls have dream catchers over their beds, then what do guys have?’ Dennis wonders aloud, snagging some half price scented candles off a display and pouring them into the basket. The labels catch Mac’s eye as they roll off the pile of purchases: iridescent beach holiday destinations, a cosy log cabin. Looks nice. They should go on a trip somewhere; somewhere at an extreme of temperature so Mac can either rub suntan lotion into Dennis’s shoulders or keep him warm with a bear hug. Either would be fine. He isn’t fussy. ‘Can’t be anything too fragile or there’s the risk of breakage from the headboard impacting the wall. Can’t be too girly.’

‘Nothing, I guess,’ Mac frowns, trying to picture it. ‘Oh! A crucifix, Dennis. That’s what I used to have over my bed in our apartment.’

Dennis cocks an eyebrow.

‘Not every guy believes in God, Mac. And even when they do, they’re not usually as virulently Catholic as you.’

Mac steers their cart carefully around a bin of kitchen towels, avoiding Dennis’s eye. He doesn’t know what virulently means but he’s going to guess it’s like ‘a lot’. And he’s not been feeling particularly Catholic lately, let alone a lot Catholic. A hundred per cent increase in the amount of gay sex he’s having probably impacted that, even if it’s not all the way sex yet. Dennis keeps frowning at him when he refers to it like that, and says in a disapproving tone that if he’s been going around thinking of mouth and hand stuff as not real sex all this time, that’s probably why he’s made so many trips to the free STD clinic that they know him by sight and ask after his friends.

‘Yeah,’ Mac smiles vaguely in agreement. A foosball table catches his eye and he points to it before Dennis can zero in on his discomfort and press on the wound for an explanation, like he always does. ‘Oh, dude! We should totally get one of these and put it in my old room!’

Dennis pulls a face.

‘We’re not college students, Mac,’ he rolls his eyes.

‘Well, we could make it a gym or something. Or – oh my god, dude!’

Mac halts, his gaze fixing on a pet bed display. Dennis follows his eye and does a double take.

‘Mac,’ he says in a low voice, ‘you can’t possibly be thinking that –’

‘We should get a _dog_ ,’ Mac says loudly. ‘We should get a rescue dog, Dennis!’

Dennis rears back and glares at him, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Are you listening to yourself? Are we two people that should be put in charge of another living creature, given our past history?’ he demands. He shifts from foot to foot uneasily. ‘Besides, you know I hate dogs, Mac.’

‘You don’t hate dogs,’ Mac protests. He frowns, perturbed at the very suggestion. Everyone loves dogs. It’s like, a thing. ‘You loved Poppins, and –’

He stops, his stomach going a little queasy at the thought of Dennis Junior.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says grimly, patting Mac on the back as he walks past the pet bed display and into birdfeeders and garden shit. ‘There you go. No dogs.’

They’ve covered three more aisles in comfortable silence when Dennis speaks.

‘Maybe a cat,’ he allows, begrudgingly. ‘I could handle a cat.’

‘A dog _and_ a cat,’ Mac suggests.

‘No,’ Dennis says. Mac can’t see him because he’s got his face buried in a display of goofy welcome mats trying to dig out one with the Phillies logo, but he’d bet a million dollars Dennis is rolling his eyes.

‘Why not? It’s a compromise.’

‘That’s not a compromise, Mac. It’s a recipe for chaos and bloodshed. It’d go against their primal instincts to be in the same house together, dude, everyone knows that. It’s in all the cartoons.’ He pauses. ‘A compromise would be if we came to some kind of middle ground suggestion in between a cat and a dog.’

‘Like a catdog,’ Mac contemplates. Charlie would be all over that. Mac should tell him about it tomorrow.

‘That’s super not a thing but whatever, yes, a catdog.’

‘If we got both we could dress them up in little outfits,’ Mac points out. ‘Matching ones.’

‘I believe what you’re thinking of there is something you would do with a human child, Mac,’ Dennis says blithely, digging out the welcome mat with a sigh of satisfaction and slapping it down in the cart. He raises an eyebrow at Mac. ‘Because we’re definitely not going to be one of those couples who dress their pets up in people clothes.’

‘If we got a sausage dog we could dress him up like he was in a hotdog bun,’ Mac says, wiggling his eyebrows.

Dennis opens his mouth and closes it again.

‘I want to hate that suggestion, but I don’t,’ he admits after a minute. Mac leans over the handle bars of the cart and grins at him. ‘But I feel like it would be funnier to put like, a little moustache and a monocle and stuff on a cat and then put it in front of Charlie’s door and run away, so he thinks it’s like the reincarnated spirit of Sherlock Holmes or something.’

Mac nearly runs the cart directly into Dennis’s midriff in his excitement.

‘Dude! That is excellent.’

‘I know,’ Dennis grins, then frowns. ‘Now be more careful where you point that thing, or you’re going to take me out with it.’

They buy a cat bed, and water guns, and a Christmas tree decoration shaped like a merman with a glittering purple tail for Dee as a leaving present. It’s June, so the merman is 70% off, and he’s glittery enough that he’ll shed on the carpet and annoy the shit out of Dee into the bargain. They laugh about it all the way to the Range Rover.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)

‘Wait, so that whole conversation, you were talking about us? That’s why you were so pissed at me? No way, dude, I would’ve clocked that in a second.’

‘Clearly you wouldn’t, Mac, considering that I _was_ talking about us and that you did not, in fact, clock it,’ Dennis says, glaring at him. He’s got his hands braced on his hips like a sitcom dad, face grouchy and tired from a day of moving chaos. Mac had almost forgotten, considering that last time they moved they just lay where they fell on Dee’s floor after Thanksgiving and stayed there for six months, that moving house is actually a complete bitch. It’s four in the afternoon and he’s never been so ready to tap out and just go the fuck to bed.

Once they build the stupid thing, that is.

The stress is also making Dennis recall or maybe wildly hallucinate details from conversations they had months ago, and get newly mad at Mac about them. It’s been a real fun day so far.

‘It was a conversation about _Friends,_ Dennis,’ Mac reminds him, his voice getting a little testy now. ‘At no point were either of our names mentioned.’

‘That’s because it was all subtextual, dumbass,’ Dennis retorts, laughing shortly. ‘Or maybe not. It was for me, but that’s presumably because I possess the ability to have a conversation that works on more than one psychological level.’

Mac throws up his hands and turns away to start combing through the little village of cardboard boxes cluttering up the kitchen floor, searching for the glint of cutlery. It’s not even the most important thing to get put away right now, but he needs to do something with the energy building up in the palms of his hands. It’s times like this he thinks it would be really awesome to have some kind of fire throwing power, because then when you were mad you could just fire off a few bursts of flame and burn off the irritation, exercise the excess kinetic energy that would otherwise spike its way out in punches.

But back in this reality, he’s scowling fruitlessly as he shoves spoons and forks into the shiny new kitchen drawers. Maybe he didn’t go to psychology school like Dennis, but that doesn’t mean he can’t recognise when someone’s tired and stressed out and lashing out at their best buddy, their very own trusty dumbass – the one who’ll definitely stick around after they’ve finished yelling, because it’s happened about a million times before. Mac knows the drill, alright. He knows exactly how this conversation goes.

He’s just not doing it today, that’s all. This is the day they’re moving back into their home, and Dennis going after him like this is making something tight squeeze in Mac’s chest. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had it all planned out, he had it all clear in his mind, and now –

‘What’s the matter,’ Dennis sneers from close behind him. ‘Truth hurts?’

‘Why don’t you go and help Charlie unload the rest of the flatpack stuff, Dennis,’ Mac says. Even as the words are coming out of his mouth he can tell that’s the wrong tack: his voice is frustratingly calm and even, like a mother reasoning with a grumpy toddler.

Well. If the shoe fits.

‘I don’t think I will,’ hisses Dennis. ‘I think what I want to do, Mac, is have a conversation with my so-called _partner,_ the one who can’t even tell when I’m talking about him right in front of his face.’

‘How was I supposed to know that, dude?’ Mac gives up on the cutlery and turns around against his better judgment. He waves a fistful of dessert spoons in Dennis’s face. ‘You were being obtuse as shit, Dennis. You kept talking about how Chandler and Monica had nothing on Ross and Rachel because they weren’t exciting enough, and how people get tired of not getting what they want eventually, and –’

He trails off, a distant light bulb going on. Dennis starts a slow, sardonic round of applause.

‘And he finally gets it, ladies and gentlemen.’ He snorts. ‘I swear to God, Mac, you are dumb as shit sometimes.’

That one lands. No matter how many times Dennis says it, it always lands.

‘Me?’ Mac narrows his eyes. ‘Takes two to make a will-they-won’t-they, Dennis, and I didn’t spot you making any moves over the last, I don’t know, _twenty-six years_.’

‘I made plenty of moves,’ Dennis shoots back. ‘It’s not my fault you were too stupid to see them for what they were.’ He starts listing items off on his fingers, the set of his mouth furious and his voice clipped. ‘I divorced Maureen within a week, and on your suggestion, if you recall. I bought a timeshare with you, I took you to the doctor when you were overweight, I picked out porn for us and hey, just in case you forgot, I moved to the fucking _suburbs_ with you, Mac. If that doesn’t imply lifelong commitment, I don’t know what does!’

Mac snorts. If that’s what Dennis considers making a move, no wonder it took them until their forties.

‘Doesn’t count, bro. None of that is like, for real putting yourself out there and saying hey, look, I want to be with you –’

Dennis scowls at him, clenching his fists at his sides.

‘Well, maybe that isn’t as easy for some people as it is for you, Mac! Did you ever think about –’

‘I tried to kiss you,’ Mac interrupts, and winces at the way it comes out, his voice too high and pained. But then it’s out, and at least it shuts Dennis up. He blinks at Mac, line of argument diverted down an unexpected avenue. ‘I tried to kiss you and you pushed me away.’

It doesn’t come out any less pathetic the second time.

‘You had bugs in your teeth,’ Dennis reminds him. He clears his throat. His mouth quirks, an awkward twitch that nearly falls sideways into a smirk but flattens out at the last second. Instead he just sighs, holding his hands up. ‘You took me by surprise, dude. And –’

He hesitates.

‘And what?’

‘And I didn’t want our first kiss to be like, while we were both covered in trash and bugs and in front of Charlie, if you must know,’ he snaps, folding his arms across his chest.

Mac snorts.

‘I told you I loved you for the first time when the McPoyles were holding us pretend hostage, Dennis,’ he points out, nausea rising up in his stomach at the memory like it always does. ‘Like, right before you went into the bathroom to try and bang Margaret. There’s really nowhere to go from there but up.’

‘Yeah, well, it seemed like a good plan at the time,’ Dennis retorts, but it doesn’t have any real heat behind it. He frowns, clearly irritated at having been distracted out of his mood. Even the bags under his eyes look tired. ‘How did we get on to talking about this, anyway?’

‘I don’t even know, dude,’ Mac sighs, scrubbing a hand across his face. ‘But we should get back to unpacking, Charlie and Frank’ll be up here with the flatpack stuff and then we can start building the bedroom furniture.’

‘ _They_ can start building the bedroom furniture,’ mumbles Dennis. ‘Can’t believe Dee skipped out on helping us,’ he complains for the fifteenth time that day. ‘She’s so unreliable. That stupid movie’s ruining everything. She’s never here when we need her anymore.’

Mac hums in agreement, not really listening. Dennis studiously doesn’t look at him; his eyes wander over to the sideboard where he’s supposed to be unpacking their sound system, but he doesn’t move. It’s amazing, really, how someone can hold so still and project the desire for contact so loudly. If Dennis was someone else, he’d apologise for snapping; he’d say he’s just tired. He’d cave in with an apologetic smile, loop his arms around Mac’s neck and tell him something gooey about making a new life together. He wouldn’t just stand there, waiting with irritated, fidgety impatience for Mac to catch on.

Mac is so, so glad Dennis isn’t someone else. 

He takes mercy in the end, rolling his eyes and grabbing Dennis’s wrist in a loose grip. Dennis arches an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

‘What?’ he asks belligerently, as if the tension in his crossed forearms isn’t screaming for Mac to at least hug him.

‘C’mere,’ Mac says quietly, giving him a gentle tug. Dennis sways maybe an inch towards him and it’s that right there, if Mac had to pinpoint something that’s changed more than anything else since they started this – that inch of capitulation. It probably doesn’t look like a lot from the outside but from this distance it’s unmistakable.

‘You’re such a little bitch,’ Mac mutters, and kisses him.

Dennis mumbles a protest against his mouth but it’s half-assed; he doesn’t pull his wrist out of Mac’s grip. His hand comes up to tug on Mac’s t shirt. He breathes out a sigh when they pull back.

‘I hate moving,’ he says, low, surveying the boxes littering the floor with something close to abject loathing.

‘I know,’ Mac says, rubbing Dennis’s back in what he hopes is a brisk, soothing motion. ‘Nobody likes it, dude. We just gotta get through it, and then we’ll be all set.’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says, gaze slipping back to Mac and crystallising, pulling Mac into focus where everything else is blurred. The irritation is still there, underneath the attention, but it’s banked for now. Mac could make good use of it, if there’s enough time left in this goddamn endless day for them to christen the bed after they actually build it. A frisson of anticipation goes through him at the suggestion, but a louder voice reminds him that it takes two – it doesn’t matter if he wants it, if Dennis taps out before they get there.

‘C’mon,’ he says, weaving their fingers together and tugging Dennis towards the door. ‘We need to eat something. Gotta get our energy levels up, dude.’

‘But I’m not hungry,’ Dennis complains, letting his weight drag Mac’s hand down in protest. Mac rolls his eyes but doesn’t push it. Dennis usually capitulates to his hunger once Mac has actually bought the food and put it in front of him so at this juncture, it’s not really worth arguing.

‘And _caffeine_ ,’ Mac continues as if he hadn’t heard. ‘Lotta lotta caffeine.’

Dennis sighs and lets himself be dragged.

‘What about crack?’ he suggests, arching an eyebrow at Mac as they walk down the hall. ‘I could definitely go for some crack.’

\---

They finish building the bed around eight thirty, shoving the mattress on top and flopping backwards onto it in a collective heap, too exhausted to move until Dennis abruptly retrieves some brain cells and sits bolt upright.

‘Everyone off,’ he barks. Charlie blinks at him, not even lifting his head from its position on Frank’s belly. Dennis starts yanking at Charlie’s sleeve. ‘C’mon, get up, I’m not asking. God knows what kind of lice are migrating from Frank’s hair into our new mattress as we speak –’

‘You _are_ asking, dude,’ Charlie points out. ‘Just like how you _asked_ us to help you move in the first place, and we agreed out of nothing more than the kindness of our hearts.’

‘You agreed because we said we’d buy pizza,’ Mac mumbles, flopping an arm out and batting at Charlie’s head. ‘And we did. Now go. Go find Dee or something. Go find Dee and get out of our apartment.’

Charlie goes tense under Mac’s outstretched hand. He sits up, wiggling out of Dennis’s reach.

‘Why would I go and find Dee?’ he asks, voice almost comically guarded.

Mac rolls his eyes. Everyone says he was the dumb one for not realising the thing with Dennis earlier, but apparently Charlie is even dumber. What does he need, a neon sign?

‘Maybe because this is the first time in over six months when she hasn’t been sharing her apartment with two dudes, bro,’ he says pointedly. ‘Might be kind of weird for her, Charlie, being on her own and all. Maybe she could use the company.’

Dennis’s jaw literally drops. Behind Charlie’s back, Mac flashes his eyes meaningfully at Dennis, trying to convey that he should keep his mouth shut for once. Dennis frowns and completely ignores him, opening his mouth to say something but before he can, Charlie is already up and off the bed.

‘Come on, Frank, we know when we’re not wanted.’ He pauses. ‘Not for the reason Mac said though,’ he clarifies carefully. ‘For. Other reasons.’

‘What other reasons?’ Frank asks, blinking around at the room as Charlie drags him up and off, as if he has no idea where he is. Which may very well be true. But he can still follow IKEA diagrams as well as the next man, and actually him and Charlie had made a great team until they started goading each other into trying to fit as many screws into their mouths as possible. Dennis had been out of the room at that point, so Mac has elected not to share with him the amount of saliva involved in the construction of their bedside tables.

‘Good ones,’ Charlie says determinedly, pushing Frank past Dennis out the door. And then they’re gone, and it’s just Mac and Dennis alone in their apartment. Their brand new old apartment, full of half-unpacked boxes and which smells so strongly of fresh paint that Charlie hadn’t even had to sniff glue all day to get mildly buzzed. Mac doesn’t care. It’s theirs.

‘What are you, pimping out my sister now?’ Dennis glares at him, sitting down on the mattress and reaching down to take off his shoes. ‘Way creepy, dude.’

‘Not that creepy,’ Mac argues. ‘It’ll keep ‘em off our backs, anyway. And maybe Dee’ll stop being so pissed we made her pay for the refurb if she’s got Charlie to distract her.’

Dennis makes a sceptical noise at that, kicking off his shoes.

‘Besides,’ Mac continues, letting his voice drop a little, ‘we wanted them out of the apartment, right?’

He smiles up at Dennis invitingly from his position stretched out on the bed. Dennis rolls his eyes but caves almost instantly, crawling up next to Mac and flops face first onto the mattress. Mac rolls over and rubs his back, rumpling his creased shirt. Dennis gives a muffled, petulant moan into his folded arms, stretching hard and then melting against the bed.

‘D’you remember where we put the sheets?’ Mac asks quietly.

Dennis sighs.

‘Third box on the left from the sixth circle of hell,’ he says sourly out of one side of his mouth. He rolls over until his back bumps up against Mac’s chest and then just lies there completely immobile, like he’s been unplugged. Mac loops an arm loosely round his waist, nuzzling into the nape of his neck. He smells like sawdust and sweat, burnt sugar from the caramel latte he had at lunch. ‘I think my brain is dead. I never want to move again, in my entire life.’

Mac laughs softly.

‘No energy at all, dude?’ he asks, leaning in and nosing along the outstretched line of his throat. ‘Not even for …’

He lets himself trail off suggestively. They’re lying barely an inch apart, so it would be impossible for him not to notice the moment Dennis’s whole body goes tense with realisation. Mac is glad he got the suggestive part out of the way because now his mouth has gone suddenly, embarrassingly dry. His throat clicks as he swallows.

‘Oh,’ Dennis says, in a totally different voice. He shifts minutely further backwards into Mac’s embrace, his ass brushing up against Mac’s crotch. A movement so slight it could be unconscious, but it’s Dennis, so it’s not. ‘You want –?’

‘I want if you want,’ Mac says hurriedly. ‘I mean, I do but – only if –’

‘I do,’ Dennis interrupts, then coughs. He turns it into a hoarse chuckle, his voice going silky and insinuating. ‘C’mon, man, you think I made you wait all this time only to back out on you now?’

‘I wouldn’t be mad, bro. You’re like, really tired,’ Mac says.

He means it, but he’s already slipping his fingers between the buttons of Dennis’s shirt, searching out the hot skin underneath. He savours the way Dennis shivers when his fingernail scrapes a nipple and slips open a few buttons so he can get at him easier, draw out more of those trembling, sighing noises. Dennis leans harder into Mac’s body, grinding back where Mac’s cock is already starting to thicken against his thigh. Mac lets out an uneven breath, mouth open in half a kiss to Dennis’s bared throat.

He wasn’t lying when he said that they don’t have to, but it’s like he can’t stop himself. He didn’t exactly used to get laid all the time even when he was still sleeping with women, so he’s used to dry spells, but these last few weeks have been on another level. He’s never wanted someone so badly in his entire life. Everything they’ve done together has just made it worse, like it’s a hunger that feeds on itself – they’ve been crammed into close quarters at every opportunity but without the chance to actually do what they want. It’s all he can think about, all he can dream about, and the worst of it is that he can tell when Dennis is thinking about it too, how he watches Mac, the way he looks, so greedy –

‘Not that tired,’ Dennis says, low, and it lights up something in Mac’s chest.

They make the bed haphazardly, movements jerky and uncoordinated. Mac looks up halfway through shoving a pillow into its case to find Dennis staring at him before he glances away hastily, his cheeks pinking. Mac opens his mouth to make a joke just to break the silence but nothing comes out: he squeezes the pillow between his hands until it makes a wheezing noise in protest and then he quickly sets it down, cheeks flushing. Dennis doesn’t say anything but Mac sees the corners of his mouth turn up slightly, the tense line of his shoulders smoothing out.

He clears his throat and scratches the back of his neck, studiously not looking at Dennis. Nothing else for it, now. His hands feel clumsy with static and slow as he pulls off his shirt, catching incendiary flashes of Dennis doing the same on the opposite side of the bed. Nerves in between his shoulder blades prickle and spark, making him shiver even though the room isn’t cold. He rakes a hand through his hair, gulping when Dennis pauses midway through unzipping his jeans to watch. His gaze trails slowly down Mac’s chest, lingering on his abs. He likes to pin Mac there when they’re making out, trail his fingertips along the line of Mac’s waistband until Mac is panting, the nerves lighting up with pinpricks of almost-too-much, ticklish pressure, making his whole body curl up around the touch, always a tantalising few inches away from the heavy ache between his legs.

Mac reaches down to readjust himself in his jeans and Dennis’s gaze drops, holds. Mac’s chest goes tight and hot, watching Dennis’s tongue dart out as he licks his lips.

Mac swallows hard, limbs weighed down with this fuzzy, underwater feeling. He shucks off his jeans with slow, self-conscious movements, slides his thumbs under the waistband of his boxers. He hesitates for a second before he pulls off them off in one quick motion, letting them fall on the ground with the rest of his clothes. He smooths his palms down his thighs and _feels_ Dennis’s eyes zero in on his cock, already embarrassingly hard and thickening more by the second although Dennis hasn’t done anything so far but look. Despite everything else they’ve already done it still feels obscene, somehow – Dennis’s breath stumbling out of his throat, just staring at Mac’s dick with this hungry look on his face, like he’s afraid it might disappear if he looks away.

Mac rubs at his thigh absentmindedly, biting his lip as he contemplates gives himself a cursory stroke just to take the edge off, although he might just end up fucking his hand with Dennis looking at him like that, wide blue eyes watching him as his hand slides slowly up and down, gathering the wetness already pooling and easing into it, thumb brushing over the head and under just like he always –

‘Did you touch yourself thinking about me?’ Dennis’s voice breaks into the fantasy softly, and Mac jerks, his hand hovering over his dick, not quite touching. Dennis’s mouth lifts up in that familiar half-grin.

‘Uh,’ Mac stutters, the question echoing in his ears although he can’t process it. He swallows. His eyes track Dennis’s hand with laser-like intensity as he finally finishes unzipping his jeans and pushes them down his thighs, uncovering clingy navy boxers that contrast unfairly well with the paleness of his skin. ‘When? Like. Before we –’

‘Before all this,’ Dennis clarifies, looping his thumbs under the waistband of his boxers and peeling them off slowly. He straightens up with a lazy smirk, watching Mac with glittering eyes. His dick is half-hard against his thigh. Mac’s hand clenches anxiously, fingernails scraping shivers against his hipbone. ‘Did you used to touch yourself, thinking about what I’d do if I was with you? Did you used to imagine me wrapping my hand around your cock, Mac? How my hand would look, what it would feel like?’

Mac’s mouth hangs open but he can’t say a word, barely breathing.

‘Did you think about me sucking you off?’ Dennis asks him softly, stalking towards the bed and sitting down with his legs folded under him, looking up at Mac, who’s still stood frozen next to the bed. Mac’s eyes drop down to him helplessly as Dennis leans forward, at eye level with Mac’s dick but ignoring it in favour of staring up at him with eyes so disingenuously wide it’s almost malicious, seems personally calculated to make Mac lose his fucking mind.

Dennis spreads his legs open wider, settling back on his haunches for balance as he slips a hand between his thighs. He slides a hand over his cock slowly and gives a reverent shiver of pleasure, closing his eyes and biting his lip as he thrusts gently into his own touch. He opens his eyes and they glint with triumphant pleasure at the look on Mac’s face. He lets his mouth fall open a little on a gasp, cheeks already getting pink and flushed. His voice comes out breathy, all sighs and deliberate softness. ‘Do you want me to do that for you, baby? Want to see what your cock looks like in my mouth?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says, his voice high and creaky before he swallows hastily. His mouth is desert dry. His cock is so hard it’s aching, the muscles in his thighs clenching as he tries to take an even breath. ‘Holy shit, Dennis, _yes_ –’

‘Good,’ Dennis says smugly. His hand is still working slowly, dreamily on his own cock, more like a placating stroke than anything with real intent. His eyes have gone heavy-lidded, his bottom lip blooming dark pink in the middle where he’s been biting. ‘Because that’s what I’m gonna do.’

‘You’re gonna fucking kill me, man,’ Mac tells him, dead serious, but Dennis just laughs.

He takes his hand off his cock when he leans in, glinting eyes on Mac all the while, and gently nuzzles at the tip of Mac’s cock. Mac’s hand forms a helpless fist before he sets it hesitantly on Dennis’s shoulder, thumb rubbing over the ridge of his collarbone. Dennis blinks for a second, something glitching before it resolves back into that lazy grin and he brings up his hands to hold Mac’s hips in place.

He starts off slowly, licks a single long stripe up the underside, winding up at the head. Mac can’t help it, he makes this completely embarrassing moaning sound when Dennis sets the flat of his tongue against the wetness gathered there and licks at it, makes a kind of humming noise at the taste. The tip of his tongue curls delicate and hot over the slit, a pinpoint of sensation that makes stars burst behind Mac’s eyelids.

His hand clenches sporadically on Dennis’s shoulder before Dennis makes an exasperated sound and reaches up to grab hold of it, shoving it on top of his head. An uneven breath trips out of Mac’s throat at the permission and he flexes his hand hesitantly in the nest of curls, praying for balance and sanity, anything, Jesus Christ – any fucking port in a storm. Dennis hums again, his mouth fastening carefully around the head of Mac’s cock and sucking gently, and Mac shudders, closing his eyes.

‘I’ve wanted this so bad for like a week,’ Dennis mutters, pulling off to give the underside of Mac’s cock a healthy lick, the flat of his tongue thorough and tingling against the spot between his cock and balls.

‘I thought – ah – thought you wanted it for longer than that, bro,’ Mac gets out with a herculean effort before biting his lip hard, his fingers twitching in Dennis’s hair. He feels another pulse of precome leave his dick and Dennis makes a soft noise of surprise when it hits his tongue. Mac squeezes his eyes shut and thinks desperately of stuff that isn’t hot. Beer bottles. The weird freshly cut grass air freshener Dennis just got for the Range Rover. The World Series. Sports! Dennis in an Eagles jersey. Oh, shit.

‘Well, yeah,’ Dennis says, rolling his eyes. He leans back in, giving kitten licks in between sentences, working his way from the base to the tip. ‘But like, this specifically, you know? Never had it before but man, I can’t count the number of times I’ve jerked off to the thought of it. Sucking you off before you fuck me.’

Something in the back of Mac’s brain abruptly fizzles out at the litany of filth but Dennis doesn’t seem to notice, just keeps lathing Mac’s dick like he’s going to be graded on his thoroughness. His hand has crept around to grab a handful of Mac’s ass, stroking shivery rhythms and encouraging him gently forwards although Mac’s barely clinging to control as it is, and _that_ definitely isn’t going to help. His hand tightens in Dennis’s hair to the point that it must be painful but Dennis doesn’t stop him, although he does pull off to nuzzle at Mac’s hip, panting. He gives a shiver, his hips rocking forward into nothing when Mac deliberately loosens his hand and then tightens it again. His eyes flicker up to Mac with an open-mouthed smirk, his lips slick and flushed pink.

‘Just a craving, I guess,’ he says, not looking away as he reaches up and jerks Mac slowly from base to tip, watching raptly as Mac’s eyelids flutter, struggling not to close. ‘Just wanted to see what it was like down here, on my knees.’

‘Oh, it’s good,’ Mac hears himself say. He barely even recognises his voice. He sounds high as shit, in danger of floating clean away. ‘It’s good, Dennis, God, you’re so good.’

Dennis’s hand pauses for less than a second before it resumes, jerking Mac into the gentle suction of his mouth around the tip.

‘Yeah?’ Dennis relaxes his mouth to say, his voice a little breathless now. ‘Is it good, Mac?’

‘So fucking good, dude, oh my God,’ Mac says reverently, his hips jerking in an ever increasing rhythm. If Dennis doesn’t lay off soon – ‘I never had it this good, I swear to God –’

‘Never?’ Dennis pants before sliding back down, further than he’s gotten before, nearly to the base before Mac bumps up against resistance; Dennis choking around him. Mac pulls his hand up from Dennis’s hair and bites it hard, focusing on the sudden blunt pain until the danger passes. When he draws his hand back the teeth marks stand out white and fuzzy against his skin.

‘Never, dude, I promise,’ he breathes out. He runs a shaky hand over the nape of Dennis’s neck and Dennis cants his hips forward in a helpless motion, breath hitching as he sucks, his mouth messy and wet and fuck, he looks so good Mac’s going to die. Mac’s going to fucking explode.

‘Fuck,’ he gasps, pushing at Dennis’s shoulder frantically, ‘Dennis, stop, you can’t – we gotta –’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis gulps as he pulls off, sounding like he’d agree to whatever Mac suggested, ‘yeah, let’s –’

Dennis scrabbles backwards on the bed as Mac clambers over him, falling on his back with his hand fixed around Mac’s neck to yank him down into a fierce kiss, mouths clashing together as Mac’s body flows over him like a wave of heat, the vast expanse of skin-to-skin contact bringing Mac out in a violent shiver as his hands come up to grab Dennis by the hips, heft him bodily up the bed so their legs aren’t hanging off the damn side. It’s so much, almost too much – Dennis’s hand scrabbling at the back of his neck, his mouth open and wet and tasting like bitter salt, his legs falling open for Mac without a second thought, knees bent around Mac’s thighs as Dennis squirms underneath him, breath coming hot and needy.

‘Where’s the,’ Mac pants, ‘fuck, Dennis, where’s the –’

‘It’s around here, fuck, I put it – I put it in the –’ Dennis struggles, closing his eyes and giving a softly-bitten sound when Mac plants his knee in between his legs and grinds firmly up. ‘Fuck, shit, I put it in the bedside, the – _fuck_ –’

Mac lunges for the bedside table, rattling the drawer right out of the frame and scrabbling until he lights on the bottle of lube. Dennis coughs into a surprised laugh, propped up on his elbows and still grinning when Mac turns back to him. He falls back against the bed with a wheeze when Mac crawls back over him but he doesn’t stop laughing, his eyes wide and bright.

‘You gonna fuck me?’ Dennis goads him, eyes flickering with his own daring as he gives Mac a heated once-over, throwing his head back against the pillow. ‘You gonna fuck me like you always wanted, Mac?’

‘Like _you_ always wanted,’ Mac retorts but it’s distracted and he forgets it as soon as he says it, the words pushed right out of his head by Dennis stretched out and watching him like that, his chest rising and falling so fast it’s a wonder he isn’t fucking hyperventilating. There’s still a trace of a smirk there as if he thinks he’s calling all the shots but he can’t stop the way he’s squirming, laid out flat against the bed and staring impatiently, like why is Mac _taking_ so long? His hips keep making these tiny abortive motions up towards Mac, dick all pink and hard and bobbing between his legs. Does he even know he’s still biting his lip? Fuck, Mac loves Dennis’s mouth. He loves Dennis’s nails and teeth and every single bone of him. 

He dips impulsively down and licks at the tip of Dennis’s dick, and Dennis’s breath catches in his throat like he just swallowed a bug. He claps a hand over Mac’s forehead, scrambling to grab hold of his hair.

‘Holy shit, give a guy some warning,’ he says, strangled.

‘Nope,’ Mac mumbles against him, licking around the head, figuring his way around the taste. It’s a weight that feels good in his mouth, velvety soft but heavy and precious, like he’d always feared and hoped it would. Dennis makes a weird, scratched noise and scrabbles for purchase, thrusting into Mac’s mouth once, hard and completely uncontrolled.

‘Fuck,’ Mac chokes, pulling back and coughing at the sting in his throat, and Dennis hums desperately.

‘Shit, sorry,’ he gets out, voice high and wavering like someone is tickling the soles of his feet. His fingers clench and then soothe over Mac’s hair. He blinks down at Mac as if he might actually die if Mac doesn’t forgive him immediately, presumably because that will involve Mac putting his mouth back on Dennis’s dick. ‘I didn’t mean to –’

Mac rolls his eyes. ‘Don’t have a coronary over it, Jesus Christ,’ he says, and bobs back down to lick Dennis slower this time, holding his hips still when he slides down over him. Dennis makes a muffled noise and when Mac tilts a glance upwards he’s got his hand shoved in his mouth and his eyes squeezed shut, which makes something hot and darkly satisfied flare up in the pit of Mac’s stomach.

Dennis holds himself almost punishingly at bay at first, bearing down against the bed and trying to make his hips apologetically concave until Mac eases off, stroking shivery patterns down the length of Dennis’s thighs. He slides a hand into the small of Dennis’s back, slick with sweat, and tilts him upwards in invitation.

‘Fuck,’ Dennis breathes out, and after a second of bracing himself he gives in, thrusting forward carefully and then again, and again, filling Mac’s mouth with slow, rolling thrusts. He makes these amazingly soft moaning sounds with every stroke of his cock across Mac’s tongue, the scrape of his nails across Mac’s scalp sending off electric spikes of pain right to the base of each individual root.

Mac doesn’t try and keep it neat, gets messy and dirty with it, letting the saliva build up in his mouth so he can go down smoothly. He accidentally skims a nail along the base of Dennis’s dick when he starts jerking it into his mouth and Dennis almost hiccups with surprise, a bewildered sound that Mac has never heard before, not on any of the tapes or through the living room wall. Mac drops the bottle of lube he’s been crushing into a pretzel and reaches down to grind against his hand in one punishing movement, sharp tingles spreading outward from the clutch of Dennis’s hand in his hair.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ Dennis breathes hoarsely, his thrusts getting sporadic and lingering. ‘Fuck, Mac, you need to stop or I’m going to –’

‘I know,’ Mac gasps, pulling off for a second, blinking hard at the vivid psychedelics of sudden oxygen intake. He shakes his head to clear it of stars and starts rummaging around for the lube, pinning Dennis’s hips to the bed with one widely spread hand on his abs, thumb dipping into the hollow over his hip and making Dennis shiver so hard it’s more like a convulsion.

‘Like fuck do you _know_ , you’ve never done this before,’ Dennis protests. He’s blinking down at Mac with narrowed eyes but there’s no real bite to it – he’s just running his mouth, as usual.

‘No, but I’ve got a dick, dude,’ Mac reminds him, and Dennis’s eyes actually flick down to it as if he can’t control his gaze at the reminder and _God_ , he looks so greedy – ‘and I know what that feels like when I’m about to bust, alright?’

‘I bet you do,’ Dennis says nonsensically, but his voice has dropped so low that the words themselves don’t matter, fly off into space immediately after leaving his mouth while Mac is pinned by the lingering heat of his gaze. One of his hands travels down his chest and skims over Mac’s widespread fingers before dipping down to stroke himself lazily. Mac’s eyes follow helplessly, not doing a single thing to stop him, fingers stilled on the bottle as he watches.

‘You like watching,’ Dennis says, thoughtful and soft, like he’s going to write this down and put it in a folder somewhere later. His hand works over his dick, slow and lingering. ‘You like watching me.’ He gives a little laugh. ‘Should’ve figured that, with the tapes and everything. Guess old habits die hard.’

Mac wants to protest that nothing about this so far has been predictable but that would be false – every time he takes his hands off Dennis it’s like Dennis resets, juddering back into his performance again like a goddamn DVD on a loop, and that’s definitely something Mac could have foreseen. He’s seen Dennis perform in bed before but he knows he can get deeper than that: he’s seen flashes of it when Dennis is kissing him, when his eyes are closed and he’s close to coming and he looks bewildered and almost angry at the vastness of it all, thrown out of the safety of his script.

Mac’s eyes find Dennis’s exacting, satisfied expression before they jolt back down to the bottle in his hand. He fumbles the cap open with shaking fingers and dumps what looks like half the goddamn bottle all over his hand. Dennis shifts against the sheets impatiently, his breathing going thready and thin.

‘You should tell me if,’ Mac starts and then swallows the rest of the words at the noise Dennis makes when Mac pushes his fingertip carefully inside. ‘Um. If it’s too much or – you should –’

‘Got it,’ Dennis breathes out in a rush of carefully controlled air. ‘If your giant monster fingers hurt me I’ll be sure to scream my goddamn head off, alright, Mac?’

‘Good,’ Mac says firmly, which makes Dennis shoot him a sharp look. Mac just watches him steadily as he pushes tentatively deeper. Dennis always wants to be made a fuss of until the fuss is actually _made,_ and then he wants everyone to know what good care he can take of himself, please and thank you and don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

‘Smartass,’ Dennis mutters, and then abruptly stops talking as Mac pushes in and out in a hesitant rhythm, bewildered by the sheer pressure. He remembers it being tight when he did this with Carmen, sure, but Dennis is pulling him in like fucking quicksand. How the fuck is Mac going to cope with that around his dick? The sensation rolls across Dennis’s face, his mouth twisting at the pressure: Mac can actually track the shivery shocks spreading outwards across Dennis’s thighs. His hands are bunching fretfully in the sheets.

Mac takes a long, even breath and bites his lip as he drags his cock over the mattress, wincing at the weird angle even as he has to force himself not to just give up and rut, harvest some of the ridiculous kinetic energy crackling along his limbs. Dennis catches sight of the motion and his eyes zero in on it. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows and he holds Mac’s gaze as he bears down against Mac’s finger, muscles relaxing in a really showy kind of way as Mac sinks deeper. Dennis looks pretty proud of himself up there. Might as well be holding a sign – _look what I can do!_

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Mac mutters, like he isn’t trying incredibly hard not to think about what that’s going to feel like once his dick is actually _inside Dennis_ , and draws back slightly so he can add another finger, slickness smoothing over the slight catch as he pushes inside. He pauses for Dennis to adjust but Dennis doesn’t want pausing: he wants more and he wants it now, obviously, badly, and he starts rolling his hips and digging his heels into Mac’s side like that might force him deeper through the sheer power of suggestion.

‘Come on, dude,’ Dennis breathes, shifting impatiently. He props himself up on his elbows and stares down at Mac, face going periodically slack and sharp with pleasure, blurry with split second response. He can’t seem to stay still, his hips hitching upwards and his hands bunching up anything within reach, including Mac’s hair. ‘Come on, it’s good, I’m ready, I want you to fuck me.’

Mac’s fingers jolt a little further inside Dennis, which only makes him pant harder and was plausibly the whole reason he said it in the first place. When Mac dares to glance up, though, Dennis is staring down at him with way less calculation than anticipated. He doesn’t look like he’s trying to be alluring or lustful or whatever it is he thinks Mac wants to see: there’s no extra layer on top of what he’s feeling. He just looks like he _needs._

Hair hangs over Mac’s face as he looks down and away, focusing intently on the slow drag and slide of his fingers, scissoring them a little. He wants to say something meaningful but he’s tongue-tied. Everything feels either too big or not big enough – nothing just right for the two of them. Is this how other people feel when it’s good? When it’s with the right person?

Dennis reaches down unexpectedly to brush his hair back out of his eyes and his thumb skates quickly over Mac’s mouth, smudging it open. Mac presses his lips to it in a wet kiss, sucking it gently into his mouth before he turns his head, butting into the palm of Dennis’s hand. Dennis doesn’t say anything, just watches with wide eyes. After a moment, he curls his fingers gently against the rasp of Mac’s stubble.

And all of a sudden some levee breaks, and Mac needs to be inside Dennis so intensely that he can’t even breathe. His fingers are shaking again as he wrestles with the lube bottle and Dennis gives this slightly choked laugh that makes Mac look up, something crumpling in his chest. But Dennis isn’t laughing at him, not really – he’s just watching Mac intently, his hands flexing where he’s let go of Mac, like he isn’t sure where he’s supposed to put them now. Mac swallows hard and gives his cock a cursory stroke as he lines himself up.

‘You ready, bro?’ he asks and Dennis rolls his eyes at the choice of words but nods a yes anyway. He places his hands firmly on Mac’s shoulders, seemingly glad to have them back within easy reach as Mac moves over him in a long line of heat. He looks Mac straight in the eye as Mac takes a deep breath and starts to push inside, trying to brace himself but hideously, overwhelmingly aware that there’s nothing he can do to prepare for it. 

A flutter of something passes over Dennis’s face; pain, or tension. Mac halts, hardly breathing.

‘Are you –’

‘Yes, I’m fine, it’s good, I’m fine, if you stop I’m going to hit you,’ Dennis breathes out in one continuous stream, and then inhales sharply, eyes fixed on some distant point over Mac’s shoulder.

Mac runs a soothing hand under Dennis’s thigh and tries to breathe in and out like a normal human does and not think about the absolutely insane pressure of Dennis squeezing around his dick. He ducks down to kiss Dennis, thumb stroking carefully along Dennis’s hip, and at first Dennis is stone-faced under him, his hands like pincers digging into Mac’s shoulders. Mac gives a shaky breath against his mouth and nudges their foreheads together, and then Dennis’s mouth twists against his, giving just a little, his stomach unclenching slightly under Mac’s abs. He releases a needy sigh, his thighs squeezing restlessly around Mac’s waist as the tightness lapses a little – not a lot, but enough for Mac to slide home.

He gives another shaky sigh against Dennis’s mouth, licking his lips. He can’t get enough goddamn air, his arms are shaking where he’s braced over Dennis and he can’t help pulling out a little just to slide back into place, and he groans out loud at the ripple of pleasure that slicks over him. Dennis jolts underneath him at the readjustment, a little electric charge passing through him, his hands tightening briefly in Mac’s hair as his mouth falls open. Mac does it again, fever racing through him at the look on Dennis’s face, and Dennis clenches around him in automatic response, breath coming out in a hard, needy jolt.

‘That good?’ Mac whispers against his mouth and kisses him again quickly. ‘Does it feel good, Dennis?’

Dennis makes a weird questioning noise and rolls his hips carefully, aiming himself down against Mac’s cock and then they _both_ make more noises, disbelieving ones as Dennis grabs hard onto the back of Mac’s neck, opening his mouth into the kiss like they’re having an angry conversation about something. He rolls his hips again and Mac instinctively thrusts forward to meet him, hitting something that makes Dennis _moan_ like some important string holding him in place has been cut and Mac has a sudden, dizzying flash of how fucking good this is going to be, how good they can be together, and then it’s _on_.

‘Fuck, right there, do it harder,’ Dennis commands against his jaw as Mac pulls back to suck in oxygen and yank Dennis’s knee up over his shoulder so he can get deeper, and when he thrusts back in again Dennis cries out, squeezing his eyes shut and shoving down against Mac shamelessly.

‘You like that?’ he pants, pulling Dennis onto him hard with every snap of his hips.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Dennis spits out in response and pulls Mac down again just so he can bite at his lips, no finesse available for a gentler kiss: his mouth is open in a snarl. ‘Keep doing it, keep going, just there, keep –’

‘Yeah,’ Mac says breathlessly, ‘I’m gonna make you come, Dennis, I’m gonna make you –’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Dennis hisses out, and maybe it was easier for him when he was busy telling Mac with fluttering eyelashes and hooded glances what he thought Mac wanted, when he was exaggerating himself to the point of caricature, but the ease has been knocked clean out of him now: he can’t even draw a decent breath, nearly hyperventilating as he screws up his eyes and bears down against Mac, leg stretched over Mac’s shoulder and shuddering with shocks of pleasure.

Mac drops his head as he tries to keep his rhythm even and deep, panting, but Dennis yanks around at his bicep until Mac looks up at him and just sticks at the expression on his face.

‘God, you’re so fucking beautiful,’ he says without thinking, and Dennis _flinches,_ as if Mac had reached out and pulled something right out of him. Mac takes an unsteady breath and leans in to kiss him hard, and after a second Dennis’s hands come up around his shoulders and they shift tempo into these long, lingering strokes without saying a word about it, deep rolling thrusts as Dennis’s thighs grow taut with encroaching tension.

‘You’re so good, Dennis, God, you feel so good – you’re just –’ Mac gets out when they break away.

Dennis’s hand rubs over Mac’s neck, slides over his cheek.

‘You look good too, you look so fucking good like this,’ Dennis tells him, words stuttering out in between breaths. ‘It suits you, Jesus Christ, _fuck_ –’

A startled laugh breaks out of Mac and they both groan, Mac’s hips snapping jerkily. Dennis bites his lip.

‘You think I look good fucking you,’ Mac marvels, sliding a hand under Dennis’s hip and thinking it might be time to – yeah, he gets his hand on Dennis’s dick and Dennis just seizes up around him, nearly choking on thin air as he moans, his whole body going tense. ‘You really just said that, Dennis.’

‘If you ever tell anyone I’ll deny it,’ Dennis tries to shoot back but the words drag, lost in a rippling sigh as he grinds down in just the right rhythm, tightening his thighs around Mac’s waist. He grins blissfully wide, beautiful and sharp and triumphant. ‘And no video camera, so no proof.’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll know,’ Mac says, dipping his head down again to land a kiss just off centre from Dennis’s mouth, caught open in a breath. ‘I’ll still know, and that’s enough for me.’

‘ _Mac_ ,’ Dennis hisses out like it’s a curse, kissing him again and winding his hands through Mac’s hair to keep him in place. He breathes out needily against Mac’s jaw when they pull back, his cock fucking Mac’s fist in quick, fast jerks. ‘Mac, I need –’

Whatever he wants, Mac thinks helplessly; whatever he needs, whatever in the world.

He thrusts in hard once, twice more in tandem with the stroke of his hand and Dennis rears up into him, his eyes squeeze shut with oversaturation of touch and sensation, right on the brink, and when he opens them again God only knows what he sees on Mac’s face but it can’t possibly be as incredible as what Mac is seeing, watching Dennis come while Mac is inside him.

Dennis twitches and writhes with aftershocks and pulls Mac down into an open-mouthed kiss, gasping ‘come on, you too, you too, I _want_ you to –’ with the words all blurred, visibly shoving the last of his energy into grinding down and groaning at the overstimulation. Mac loses himself in it, stops keeping track of the pace and the rhythm and just lets himself fuck, ducking his head down and kissing Dennis, kissing him until he runs out of air and Dennis is tired and spent but his thumbs are careful when they stroke behind the backs of Mac’s ears and Dennis doesn’t stop kissing him as he comes, even when Mac freezes deep inside him as an incredible wave of pleasure shudders through him and leaves him shaking, gasping – Dennis still kisses his mouth and his cheek and his closed eyes, keeps his hands on Mac all the way through.

He doesn’t even let go when Mac pulls out and slumps next to him – he just rolls over and keeps stroking him, featherlight touches soothing over his back and shoulders as Mac lies there panting, slumped face first into the pillow. He feels like he needs to be reassembled. When he turns his head Dennis is watching him, his eyes glittering and overfull of something Mac had never previously considered him to be in excess of. He doesn’t look like he wants to pull away. If anything he looks like he wants to touch _more,_ but he’s not sure if he’s allowed.

Mac clumsily reaches up and takes hold of one of Dennis’s hands and kisses it without looking away from Dennis’s face. A spasm of a smile jolts over Dennis’s mouth.

‘Are you okay?’ Mac asks, because Dennis isn’t saying anything and it’s making him nervous to just be watched like that. He hadn’t pictured Dennis going this quiet, this spaced out. He’s hardly even blinking. ‘Are you –’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says quietly, a flicker of irritation passing over his face. Mac smiles automatically. ‘I’m fine.’

Mac groans and rolls over onto his side so he can face Dennis better without twisting his neck, and Dennis shifts a little closer to him on the mattress, curling his knees up. He brushes the hair off Mac’s forehead. Mac closes his eyes and leans into the touch.

‘Dennis,’ he says muzzily. Dennis makes an inquiring noise. ‘Dennis, that was amazing.’

‘Yep,’ Dennis says, sounding deeply, deeply satisfied. ‘Sure fucking was, Mac.’

‘Like, better than I ever –’

‘I know,’ Dennis says confidently, and Mac frowns.

‘You don’t know, dude,’ he points out through a sudden and tectonic yawn. ‘You didn’t even let me finish, you don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘I do know,’ Dennis says, and then he’s yanking on Mac’s arm until Mac gives a mournful grunt and shuffles forward again. He feels out Dennis’s chest with his cheek and then slumps there, the rest of his limbs splayed like a starfish across the bed. Dennis’s hand comes to rest benevolently on his head. His voice continues, serene and totally self-assured. ‘You were going to say that was better than you’ve ever had it in your life, and I know that to be true because _I’ve_ never had better, and I’ve had way more sex than you, dude. So if _I’ve_ never had it better, then _you_ definitely haven’t.’

He sounds pretty proud of himself for this deduction. It sits wedged in Mac’s throat, tough to swallow. Does Dennis even realise what it means, admitting something like that? It’s kind of unfair of him – and yet absolutely typical – to drop a compliment bomb that huge when Mac doesn’t even have enough energy to raise his head. He hasn’t even cleaned them up yet! He hasn’t even kissed Dennis – a sweet, satisfied post-coital kiss, one he’s been thinking about for weeks. He hasn’t even got the energy to open his eyes and check if Dennis is fucking with him.

Doesn’t seem like it though. Dennis is just sitting in content silence, not seeming to expect a response.

Mac’s still holding Dennis’s free hand so he squeezes it once, hard. Dennis’s hand pauses in his hair and then continues, soft and slow. His thumb brushes Mac’s forehead.

‘If you say so,’ Mac says eventually.

‘I do,’ Dennis says primly.

‘Oh shit, dude, we didn’t do mood lighting,’ Mac remembers suddenly. ‘Or music or candles – or _any_ of it, Dennis, fuck, I’m sorry –’

‘Oh yeah,’ Dennis says vaguely. ‘Well. Next time, I guess.’

‘But I thought you wanted that,’ Mac pushes, frowning sleepily. ‘For our first time.’

‘Well,’ Dennis says, sounding flustered. ‘It’s not like we can’t do it for just regular sex. I mean, we’ve got a lot of time. We can work it out.’

‘Huh,’ Mac says, warmth spreading through his entire body.

Dennis sighs and gives Mac’s shoulder a gentle shove, apparently having recouped enough to have regained some measure of his usual irritation. ‘Now get off me, dude, I need to go wash up. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s not polite to just collapse on someone after sex?’

‘You’re the one who pulled me over here,’ Mac protests but he slumps backwards against the pillows at Dennis’s light push, giving a low groan. Dennis’s fingers trail across his chest as he climbs over Mac to get to the bathroom, and Mac lies where he fell, legs splayed and lazy, one hand tucked under his head. He gives into the satisfaction lodging deep in his muscles and closes his eyes.

The sound of the tap running reaches him as if from far away; Dennis is muttering to himself, words Mac can’t make out. Probably forgot where he packed his make-up wipes, although Mac told him they should just keep some in the car for situations like that. Dennis never listens when Mac has good ideas like that, just like how Mac suggested they do a grocery run earlier and Dennis just scowled at him, snapping that moving day was bad enough without adding a WalMart run. So now they don’t have anything for breakfast tomorrow. Typical.

Maybe Mac can sneak out when it’s still early, pick something up and bring it back. Dennis will be tired and irritable and soft-eyed like he always is first thing in the morning. He’ll take the coffee first and glare at the breakfast burritos but that won’t stop him sneaking bites when he thinks Mac isn’t looking, scrolling through his phone with a pinched expression, reading out stupid headlines to Mac and snorting derisively as he eats. He’s the one who instigated the ‘no eating in bed’ rule and yet he’s always the first to break it. Maybe he’ll get ketchup on the sheets. Maybe they’ll have to get new ones, and another trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond is in Mac’s imminent future. Or maybe they’ll be salvageable after all, and they’ll get worn thin and soft from use over the next decade, laundered every other week but never ironed because who’s got time for that shit? They’ll have to throw them out eventually, soft and familiar as they are, to be replaced with an identical set. Dennis will presumably still be demanding the same thread count when they’re fifty; Mac can’t really imagine him mellowing with age.

‘What’re you smiling about?’ Dennis’s voice asks, and when Mac blinks his eyes open Dennis is sat on the edge of the bed, watching him tiredly. He’s wearing boxers and Mac’s discarded RIOT t shirt, apparently heedless of the fact that Mac’s been hauling boxes and flatpack around in it all day. It’s loose around his upper arms where it strains on Mac. Dennis has always had such skinny arms, especially when they were kids; he used to get Mac to wrap his hand around his bicep and point out proudly how Mac’s thumb could touch his fingers, how Mac didn’t even have to squeeze him to make it work. Mac never did understand that, how Dennis could be so happy to take up so little space.

‘Thread counts,’ Mac says nonsensically, and, softer: ‘come the fuck down here.’

Dennis frowns at him, clearly tired enough to start getting contrary, so Mac yanks at the hem of his shirt until Dennis capitulates with a groan, falling into an easy, warm kiss that lasts a long time.

‘S’mine,’ he says when Dennis pulls back, still hanging over him, his eyes puffy and creased with exhaustion. He yanks at the shirt more firmly when Dennis frowns in confusion. ‘Thief.’

‘Slander,’ Dennis replies without heat. He pats Mac lightly on the thigh and pulls back to climb over Mac to his side of the bed. ‘Go to the bathroom so we can sleep, dude. I’m fucking beat.’

Mac groans but levers himself up with a truly heroic amount of effort. 

When he comes back into the room Dennis is already tucked in, eyes shut, lying half on his front with one leg jammed up nearly to his chest, clearly waiting for Mac to slide into place behind him. Mac’s heart gives an achy, besotted throb. It’s really ridiculous. He can’t help but feel kind of irritated with himself even as he stares. 

‘Did you turn out the bathroom light?’ Dennis mumbles into the pillow.

‘Yeah, bro,’ Mac says softly, walking over and slipping between the sheets. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘You go to sleep,’ Dennis retorts, but it’s quiet, more like a sigh, and he doesn’t say anything more when Mac curls into place around him, only leans back against him and settles, content. Mac shuts his eyes and lets himself slip down into sleep. 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Summer brings out the princess in Dennis, although Mac doesn’t put it in so many words to his face: he’s privately coming to appreciate the invention of the term ‘high-maintenance’.

Dennis doesn’t like the sun, except for when he’s tanning, and even then he only likes it in small amounts. He doesn’t like tap water, only bottled, and he doesn’t like it when Mac forgets to wear sunscreen – he seems unduly concerned that a spontaneous game of basketball in the midday heat is either going to make Mac’s tattoos fade weirdly or cause him develop melanoma on the spot, or possibly both.

‘It only takes one time,’ he tells Mac primly, slapping a bottle of sunscreen into his palm. He raises an eyebrow at Mac’s irritation. ‘And you’d look weird bald, dude.’

Above all, he whines almost non-stop about the heat – he hates sweating, and having to drink water all the time, and peeling himself off the couch to pee. He pretends to be asleep when Mac leaves for the gym in the morning and then calls him just as Mac is finishing up, bitching and flirting his way through the conversation until Mac agrees to drop by Starbucks on his way home and bring Dennis something both caffeinated and iced. Mac doesn’t remember him being this demanding about beverage pick-up when they weren’t together. Trust him to immediately start abusing significant-other privileges the moment he acquires one.

‘And none of that mojito iced tea shit,’ Dennis specifies, sounding like he’s yanking on his own curls at the very thought. ‘If it doesn’t have at least two shots of espresso, don’t even bother coming home.’

Mac rolls his eyes as he walks out of the gym with his bag slung over his shoulder, shuffling his phone from one hand to the other.

‘I should make you get your own damn coffee,’ he protests, but it’s a token protest. He’s already taking a left, diverting from his usual route home. Still, no need to let Dennis know that. ‘If you wore tank tops like I keep telling you to, you wouldn’t be as hot, bro.’

‘You’re already outside, this is just an efficient use of our time,’ Dennis tells him blithely, as if they recently became one organism. Mac imagines him laid out on the couch, head thrown back like the drama queen he is, mouth curled in a gloating smile. Mac has pretty fond feelings for that couch. Whatever time in their apartment they don’t spend in bed, they spend stretched out on it. It doesn’t look like it could fit two grown men lengthways but they’ve had a lot of time to experiment since they moved back in, and with their natural resourcefulness and a fair amount of desperation they’ve managed to make it work. Multiple times. In multiple different positions.

Dennis’s voice startles Mac out of his reverie.

‘And I do wear tank tops. I wear them at home, when there’s no one else around.’

‘You wear them when I’m around,’ Mac reminds him, grinning at the mental image and quickly stifling it when he accidentally catches an old lady’s eye. She gives him a scandalised look as he walks past and he ducks his head, sure he’s blushing scarlet. Dennis can’t see that either but Mac can never quite escape the feeling that Dennis always _knows_ about these things somehow – he wouldn’t be surprised if Dennis had some kind of extra sense that tipped him off whenever Mac embarrassed himself in public because he was thinking about Dennis naked.

Dennis gives a short laugh and lets his voice drop.

‘Not for long,’ he murmurs.

Mac shivers hard even though it’s searing hot outside and he’s walking in the blazing sun. He bites his lip, staring down at the sidewalk in a vacant haze. Frankly, it’s a miracle he hasn’t tripped over and chipped a tooth yet during one of these late morning phone calls. It’s like it doesn’t even matter where he is, Dennis doesn’t even need to be present. Just the suggestion of him – the amused curl of his voice in Mac’s ear – is enough.

‘I’m in public, dude,’ he mutters, but he’s smiling.

‘So hurry up and get home,’ Dennis says, still pitched somewhere south of appropriate for public consumption. He hangs up without saying goodbye and Mac tries really hard to glare at his phone but he can’t quite manage it; he grins all the way home. 

It isn’t just the sex. If Mac had to put his finger on it, he’d say that things with the rest of the gang have been running smoother too, less prone to sniping and random explosions. Maybe Charlie and Dee were really onto something when they locked the two of them in the bar overnight – maybe all their weird tension really was jamming up the rest of the group, even more than Mac had realised. Not that they don’t all still yell at each other a whole bunch, but it doesn’t feel the same as it had in that last, ugly year, when every fight had something painful and fraught running underneath it. Mac remembers sitting down in the knee-deep water on the cruise ship just over six months ago, ready to give up, and the whole memory feels hazy and unreal, as if it happened to somebody else. Whatever them being together is doing for Dennis – and Mac can’t help but speculate, even as he shies back from the thought – it’s relaxed something Mac didn’t even know was twisted inside him, soothed something that was hurting all of them.

The gang would laugh at him for thinking of it like that, but he’s sensitive to this stuff, no matter what they say, and some part of him knows that this is just what honesty feels like – what being true to yourself feels like. And even if they’re not good people then don’t they still deserve that, after all this time? To be happy and honest and true to themselves?

Another part of him waits, with an almost palpable sense of apprehension, to be punished for how good this feels.

But it doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t, and before he knows it the weeks are ticking over into months and Dennis is still looking at him like that, still reaching out for him absently in the midst of sleep, still a coiled spring that extends, with caution, at the touch of Mac’s hand.

‘This is truly disgusting, I just want you to know that,’ Dee tells them, propped up against the bar with her arms crossed, just as Mac and Dennis round off their perfectly in-sync Chicago duet. They hang up the microphones attached to the karaoke machine and high five, winding their fingers together after. Mac’s grinning so hard his face is aching a little. ‘Just really gross. Why are you like this?’

‘Homophobe,’ Mac accuses her without looking away from Dennis. ‘You really hit the high notes on that go round, dude,’ he tells Dennis enthusiastically. Dennis looks smug, pink glowing across his cheekbones.

‘Not because it’s _gay_ ,’ Dee says loudly, exasperated. She waves a hand at Dennis. ‘Because it’s – urgh. Stop. Because it’s _you_ , and you’re my twin, and I didn’t think you even had feelings, and now you keep having them in front of me, and it’s way too much information!’ She points at Mac. ‘And then _you_! With the – the karaoke machine! That you keep refusing to let me use! The two of you! Stop!’

‘We are not going to stop,’ Dennis says with the kind of decisiveness that used to make Mac go slightly weak at the knees and now has double the effect. He turns to look at Dee, releasing Mac’s hand to go over to the bar. ‘We are going to keep practicing, and then we are going to win this couples’ karaoke contest and shove it in all their faces.’

‘Yeah!’ Mac agrees.

‘Who’s they?’ Charlie wonders aloud, looking up from where he’s been trying and failing to decipher the song listing on the back of the karaoke CD for the last twenty minutes. Mac rolls his eyes and turns the case right side up for him. Charlie clears his throat, avoiding Mac’s eye. ‘I don’t even see what the point of this is, dude. There isn’t even a prize or anything. Just like, a dumb certificate.’

‘The certificate isn’t dumb,’ Dennis snaps, then looks shifty. ‘Anyway, that’s not the point. The point of this, Charlie, is that those assholes handing out the sign-up forms were straight up homophobic,’ Dennis reminds him, swigging water and tossing a bottle to Mac, who catches it at the last second. ‘And that we’re going to take those motherfuckers _down.’_

‘I still think they were just surprised, that’s all,’ Dee argues. ‘I mean, when we were passing by the stand, the two of you were in the middle of yelling at each other about who forgot to DVR _Man Vs. Food_ , it’s understandable that they wouldn’t assume –’

‘No, no, she was all like oh, well I _guess_ you can still apply. They were super judgmental,’ Mac argues, gesturing wildly with his water bottle, stretching out the vowels. He frowns, the memory thin and watered down through the filter of his rage. ‘Although it does seem kinda weird that they don’t like gays at a karaoke competition.’

‘What’s gay about karaoke?’ Charlie asks, blinking.

‘I don’t know, dude,’ Mac says, still frowning. ‘It’s just a thing, right? Like, with musical theatre? You know, how everyone’s like oh, of course he’s gay, he’s into _musical theatre_ –’

‘Well, you _are_ gay and into musical theatre,’ Charlie points out. ‘So that’s accurate.’

‘Yeah, I know, Charlie,’ Mac says patiently. ‘But I didn’t invent the stereotype, obviously –’

‘Look, we’re getting off track here,’ Dennis interrupts, resting a hand on Mac’s shoulder and addressing all of them. He squeezes, and Mac forgets most of what he was intending to say. ‘The important thing isn’t whether or not karaoke is an inherently gay activity, although we can come back to that later on. The important thing is that we smash the competition into teeny, tiny little pieces, isn’t it, Mac?’

He turns his sparkling grin on Mac, eyes already alight with the glitter of promised success, and Mac can’t do anything but nod.

They don’t smash the competition into teeny, tiny little pieces. They come second to last, beating Artemis and Frank only on the technicality that the two of them had actually sung, whereas Frank collapsed onstage before they’d even begun and Artemis abandoned him to grind with one of the tech operators.

‘Maybe we should’ve bleeped out some of the swears, dude,’ Mac says regretfully as they shuffle through the door of the bar. He yanks off his bowtie with a sigh. ‘Or like, any of them.’

‘And compromise our artistic integrity?’ Dennis snorts, pulling them both beers and frowning at Mac’s wanton destruction of their carefully coordinated costumes. He’s still wearing his own pale blue bowtie, and doesn’t look inclined to take it off any time soon. ‘Fat chance. I’d rather lose.’

‘Uh huh,’ Mac looks at him sideways. The muscle jumping in Dennis’s temple belies his words. ‘We were totally the best anyway, dude. No one else even had close to our range.’

‘Of course we were,’ Dennis sniffs, almost affronted that Mac felt the need to state something so obvious. ‘Damn straight,’ he reinforces, clinking his beer against Mac’s. They drink.

‘Or, you know, the opposite of that,’ Mac says meditatively. Dennis chokes on his beer.

‘You know, Mac,’ he says thoughtfully when he’s recovered, and irritably waved Mac off from hitting him on the back, ‘that does give me an idea.’

\---

‘Are you sure about this, bro?’ Mac asks, watching Dennis as he stares up at the entrance with trepidation. ‘You know we don’t have to, we can always just –’

‘It’s not the gallows, Mac,’ Dennis snaps. ‘I’m fine, it’s just –’

He tugs at his shirt sleeves, yanks at his belt, his mouth a thin, glossed line. Mac’s been sweeping looks over him all the way here and if there’s a hair out of place, he hasn’t spotted it.

‘You look good,’ Mac tells him. Dennis just wrinkles his nose, still watching the entrance as if it might start advancing toward them. He’s dabbed a line of iridescent glitter across his cheekbones for the occasion, and it keeps catching the streetlights: pink one second, blue the next. It’s a goddamn safety hazard. Mac nearly walked into moving traffic earlier because he couldn’t stop staring. ‘I’m serious, Dennis. You look great, dude, you got nothing to worry about.’

‘Thank you,’ Dennis says stiffly. He looks at Mac sideways, lingering on his DETROIT t-shirt with a sigh. ‘I guess you don’t look terrible, either.’

‘Wow, gee, thanks,’ Mac says, rolling his eyes. ‘Don’t hurt yourself, bro.’

‘Well, what do you want me to say, I’m all –’

‘I know you’re all –’ Mac waves a hand, gesturing to Dennis’s general emotional state. ‘But I’m telling you, dude, we don’t have to do this today. There’s no pressure, we could just go home –’

‘Quit mollycoddling me, I’ve been through worse trials than this,’ Dennis snaps through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s just go inside.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Mac says, rolling his eyes as they start forward together, as solemn as brothers in arms. ‘It’s just, who knows what the crowd is gonna be like? I’m not sure who even goes to The Rainbow on Mondays, dude.’

The answer to Mac’s question is immediately obvious: there has to be fewer than twenty people here and most of them are regulars. Mac waves at a couple in greeting. One of them that Mac vaguely remembers as Cole raises his eyebrows when he spots Dennis, who is looking around with cautiously interested eyes, and shoots Mac an impressed look. Mac sends back an excited thumbs-up. 

‘C’mon, let’s go get a drink,’ he says, leading Dennis over to the bar. ‘Two double rum and cokes,’ he tells the bartender, who nods at him in greeting.

Dennis snorts.

‘What?’

‘We can’t drink beer now we’re in a gay bar?’ Dennis questions with a raised eyebrow.

‘Two for one on spirits and mixer, bro,’ Mac tells him breezily, and Dennis rolls his eyes but takes the drink anyway. He pulls a face at the music.

‘Christ, I hate Miley Cyrus,’ he mutters, leaning back against the bar and clearly taking a survey the crowd while doing his utmost to project nonchalance. Mac keeps bopping along to the song and ignores Dennis’s mood.

‘You could request something,’ Mac says gamely. ‘I always request _Poker Face_ but after a while they asked me not to, because they always end up playing it anyway.’

Dennis’s eyes quit surveying the bar and land on him with curious intent.

‘How often have you been here, Mac?’ Dennis asks, watching Mac over the rim of his glass as he takes a drink.

Mac blushes.

‘Well,’ he starts. ‘Not like – not _that_ much. But after I came the first time, looking for that leprechaun’s pot of gold, it was really fun to dance and I thought, so long as I didn’t, y’know –’

‘Uh huh,’ Dennis humours him through narrowed eyes.

‘Then it was fine, because it was just like any other club, except with more gay guys. And better music,’ he says enthusiastically, taking the opportunity to demonstrate a few of his better karate moves. Dennis watches him with barely restrained amusement and Mac warms at the look, smiling at him. He’s loosening up with the booze but still looks kind of cagey, like he expects someone to come over and start giving them shit. He’s never seemed worried about that before, but it’s kind of different when you’re really out like this – like, _out_. There’s really no plausible deniability when you’ve got glitter smeared across your cheekbones.

‘You must have had guys hit on you, though,’ Dennis persists, something complicated that Mac can’t identify passing over his face.

‘Well, yeah, but I just told them I was straight,’ Mac shrugs. There had been a few times when it was harder to force out the excuse – it would be so easy, and who would know, and did it really count if it was someone you hadn’t met before, that you would never see again, if it was just a fumbling hand in the dark and if no one around you would judge – and what about if the guy’s hair curled just right, if he had eyes so blue you struggled to look away? There had been so many reasons to say yes but in the end Mac had always said no, even if he stuttered; something loud and blaring in the back of his head drowning out whatever desire kept fighting its way to the surface.

Dennis clears his throat, interrupting Mac’s thoughts.

‘They must have loved that,’ he sneers, looking away. His nostrils are flaring with anger or fear or something else he would never admit to. He’s nearly shouting now to be heard over the music, asking his next question in a voice so harsh Mac doesn’t register his meaning at first. ‘What about David and Scott?’

Mac blinks at him.

‘What about them?’ he asks, bewildered.

‘Did you want to fuck them?’ Dennis asks loudly. His eyes meet Mac’s, sharp and somehow already hurt. ‘When we were on the cruise ship, did you want to fuck them?’

Mac stops dancing abruptly and stares at Dennis, his brain looping the last sentence over and over in bits and shards. He didn’t think Dennis even remembered who they were. He didn’t think Dennis had even _cared_ , back then.

‘Or what about now?’ Dennis asks, his narrowed eyes sharp with malicious intent: the look he gets when he’s just waiting to catch Mac out. ‘How about that, Mac? Would you fuck them now?

‘No!’ Mac nearly shouts back, baffled. ‘Why are you being so weird, dude? Why would you even think that?’

Dennis looks away pointedly and doesn’t answer, but the tense, miserable set of his shoulders gives him away. When in doubt, pick a fight: the tried and tested Reynolds coping mechanism.

‘Of course I wouldn’t, Dennis,’ Mac says, gentler. Dennis still isn’t looking at him, but he’s concentrating really hard on a spot on the opposite wall in that way where Mac knows he’s listening with every bone in his body. Mac tries to make his voice light. ‘Besides, we – we’re not using protection, Dennis, we can’t fuck anyone else! It’s just not ethical!’

A guy wearing a tight, shiny shirt and a welcoming grin who’d been approaching them does an instant 180 and walks back in the opposite direction.

‘Oh my God,’ Dennis says loudly, although the set of his jaw is less wounded now, more petulant. ‘I didn’t say that _I_ wanted, I was asking if _you_ – also, I cannot believe that _you_ of all people are lecturing me on the use of birth control.’ He blinks. ‘I mean – contraception.’

Mac snorts.

‘Yeah, at least you don’t have to worry about getting pregnant. Not like all the chicks you’ve banged. You’ve probably got like ten kids out there somewhere.’

‘You banged chicks too,’ Dennis points out, brow furrowing. ‘You never thought about how you might have illegitimate kids roaming around?’

‘I didn’t bang as many as you,’ Mac shoots back, and rolls his eyes when Dennis smirks into his drink. ‘Not something to be proud of, dude! Especially seeing as, you know –’

He gestures to their general surroundings and right on cue, the glitter cannon goes off to whoops and cheers. The crowd’s started to bulk out while they’ve been talking, flashes of mesh and neon and chrome flexing and grinding around them. Mac grins and watches glitter rain down over the dancing bodies, but Dennis is still scowling at him, and doesn’t seem inclined to join in the fun.

‘Exactly!’ he nearly yells in Mac’s ear, his voice beginning to slur a little now with the alcohol. ‘This is precisely why it’s beside the point now, Mac. It’s not like either of us are going to be banging anyone else anyway, so why are we even having this conversation?’

He pulls up short at the end of the sentence and leans back with an almost comically blank face. Mac watches him cautiously, his heart beating a mile a minute.

‘Well,’ Mac starts, and Dennis’s eyes flicker up to him. ‘You started the conversation, Den.’

Dennis twitches.

‘But I mean,’ Mac continues, clearing his throat, ‘that’s, that’s exactly what I was thinking anyway. That neither of us would – that we wouldn’t –’

Dennis just looks at him, blinking slow and placid like he does when he’s thinking in a lot of detail about punching someone in the face.

‘So that’s good,’ Mac continues, wishing dimly that he could stop talking, ‘that you feel that way too. That you don’t want to bang anyone else. I’m glad about that.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dennis says faintly.

‘Because I wasn’t sure, y’know,’ Mac rambles on, aware of his cheeks flushing, ‘both of us being such playboys and all –’

‘Oh my God,’ Dennis interrupts, his expression abruptly collapsing into something exasperated and – begrudgingly – fond. ‘Okay, you know what, just come here.’

He slams back his drink and dumps his glass on the bar, takes hold of Mac by the front of his shirt and pulls him in until there’s less than an inch between them. Mac goes with a gasp, his hands landing automatically on Dennis’s hips.

‘If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it,’ Dennis tells him firmly, and Mac doesn’t really know what he’s talking about but he thinks he’d do anything, anything Dennis asked.

Dennis keeps his eyes dead on Mac when he starts dancing and it’s so slow at first Mac doesn’t even recognise it as a dance, and Christ, there’s a reason for that – because it’s more like grinding, Dennis kind of gyrating against him with his eyebrows raised, half-smirking. It’s nothing like when they’ve danced together before, when Mac couldn’t stop trying to get closer even as he watched Dennis spinning out of his reach. This time Dennis is goading him, watching with glittering eyes: he might as well be wearing a sign. It’s a taunt Mac takes seriously – he’s the one who’s been here before, after all. He _knows_ from gay dancing.

He grips Dennis’s hips more firmly and leans into his space, grinning at the way Dennis’s eyes go wide and startled. He slides one hand into the small of Dennis’s back and uses it to meld them together, not missing the way Dennis bites his lip when Mac’s knee slips between his thighs, a drag of pleasant friction.

They get into a rhythm with it quickly and it doesn’t matter when the song changes, because the beat is always intrinsically the same and what the hell, it’s not as if they’re dancing to any particular rhythm anyway. They’re just doing their own thing, over here in the corner. Mac doesn’t recognise any of these dizzying, electric, dreamy songs they’re playing but sometimes a line or two drifts through the clamour and snags and he has to laugh, tuck it into Dennis’s neck, out of sheer amazement that they’re here, that this is happening – that he’s dancing here with Dennis and he’s not ashamed, he isn’t trying to hide anything, and someone’s singing _say you’ll never let me go_ and Dennis’s hand is on his face and tugging him down in an open-mouthed kiss, sweet and almost desperate, and he couldn’t have imagined this for them at all.

‘People are looking,’ Dennis murmurs, his lips skidding over Mac’s. He’s watching the crowd over Mac’s shoulder with narrowed eyes. 

‘Fuck ‘em,’ Mac tells him, wondering if he can get away with pulling the back of Dennis’s shirt up so he can slide his hand under there and draw that shiver out of Dennis, the one pulled right from the base of his spine.

‘They’re all so fucking _young_ ,’ Dennis says, his voice catching on the last word. His hands tighten on the back of Mac’s neck. He looks at Mac and Mac’s heart twists at how unexpectedly wide his eyes are, how aggrieved: how his lip curls with contempt even as he looks on with envy. ‘When did we get so old, Mac?’

‘You think people are watching cause we’re old?’ Mac laughs roughly, running one hand up to Dennis’s shoulder and squeezing. Dennis rolls his eyes and looks away, although his hands tighten on Mac’s shoulders. ‘They’re watching cause you’re so hot for it, Den.’

He was mostly joking but something weird happens on Dennis’s face, an electric jolt passing through. Dennis’s eyes flicker up to him and away but Mac catches it anyway, and he grasps onto it like a baited hook, his hands pulling Dennis in closer as he leans in.

‘Everyone’s looking at you,’ Mac intones, lips brushing Dennis’s ear. Dennis shivers hard, hands slipping and clutching at Mac’s biceps. He swallows back a sound, something breathy, Mac can’t hear over the thump of the music but he doesn’t need to; Dennis is responding below the waist enough for both of them. He thrusts his hips more deliberately than the slow, dreamy grind they’ve been floating along on and watches Dennis lick his lips in a strained, almost anxious movement. ‘Everyone’s wishing they could take you home, Dennis, they’re wishing they were me right now.’

Dennis can’t help it this time: he groans, pushing down against Mac’s thigh now slotted perfectly in between his legs. Mac sucks gently on the underside of Dennis’s jaw. One of Dennis’s hands creeps up to fist tightly in Mac’s hair and Mac swallows a groan, his hips hitching forward.

He pulls back breathing hard and Dennis watches him with narrowed eyes. His cheeks flushed, his pupils blown and wide.

‘You look so good right now, Dennis,’ Mac tells him softly. ‘You look like you want it so bad.’

Dennis swallows hard, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks as he drops his head and grinds his hips down slowly, carefully against Mac’s thigh, head falling back on a gasp. Mac swears under his breath, hands running up and down Dennis’s back. Dennis’s dick is so hard it must be uncomfortable in those jeans, fuck, is that a spot of wetness on the denim? Mac takes a shaky breath, one hand pulling Dennis’s shirt up desperately so he can run his hands over the bare skin of his back, damp with sweat. Fuck Dennis’s complaints.

But Dennis only pants, pulling him in closer, the muscles in his back bunching and releasing as he grinds down, nearly bouncing on Mac’s thigh. 

‘Everyone’s looking,’ Dennis chants, sounding halfway out of his mind, lips curled back from his teeth as he watches Mac like a viper, ‘everyone’s watching us – tell me, Mac, tell me –’

‘Everyone wants you, Dennis,’ Mac gets out hurriedly, ‘they’re all – fuck,’ Mac hisses out when Dennis grinds down harder, flicker of a smirk passing across his mouth as he watches Mac struggle. Mac’s hands squeeze hard, harder around Dennis’s waist and Dennis’s mouth falls open. Mac leans in and kisses him, messy and open-mouthed, Dennis still panting and grinding on his thigh in an ever-increasing rhythm.

‘Mac,’ he breathes into Mac’s mouth, ‘fuck, I need –’

‘You want me to stop? You want me to take you home and fuck you, Dennis?’

‘Oh my God,’ Dennis moans, pulling back and staring at Mac like he’s never seen him before. Mac watches back, heat coursing through his body. ‘Yes,’ he snaps, ‘yes, that’s what I want, alright, _yes_ –’

They slam into the apartment plastered together, Mac rattling the door closed with the weight of Dennis’s body wrapped around him. He hefts Dennis’s thighs up around his waist with a grunt, hauling their hips together. Dennis is snarling, almost angry with how much he wants it, dragging his nails down Mac’s back as if Mac deserves war wounds just for making him feel like this, rutting into it when Mac starts mindlessly thrusting against him, aggravated by how many clothes they’re still wearing.

‘Couch, couch,’ Dennis pants and Mac just grinds into him again, uncomprehending and stupid with lust, until Dennis smacks him on the shoulder. Mac draws back and Dennis nods meaningfully across the room.

‘Right, right, sorry,’ Mac mutters, letting Dennis down but not letting go, still attached at the mouth as they stumble over to the couch. Mac sits down hard and Dennis crawls on top of him, fingers scrabbling to unbutton his shirt until Mac gets impatient and just _yanks_ , scattering buttons that land with a series of quiet taps on the floorboards.

Dennis stares at him and makes a furious noise that melts into a moan when Mac ducks his head and fastens his mouth around a nipple, sucking and licking softly, nipping a little with his teeth. Dennis’s hands wind in his hair and twist hard, pushing Mac’s head down as his hips jerk frantically. Mac’s hands fumble with Dennis’s zipper and his dick throbs almost painfully at the sound of Dennis’s almost worried-sounding sigh when Mac gets his hands inside his boxers.

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ Dennis mutters, nudging forward with his hips pointedly, ‘c’mon, Mac.’

‘You want me to?’ Mac pulls back to pant and then transfers to the other nipple, savouring the way Dennis yanks in a breath like it hurts him, like it stings and he doesn’t want it to stop.

‘I said so, didn’t I?’ Dennis goads him, almost snarling again. ‘So fucking get to it, Mac, Jesus Christ –’

‘Fuck, Dennis,’ Mac gets out, and rummages around in the couch cushions until he locates the lube, hidden there for moments such as these. Dennis leans in and unzips his pants, urging Mac to sit up briefly so he can yank his boxers and jeans down while Mac lubes up two fingers and gets it all over Dennis’s jeans yanking them down far enough to get inside him. Dennis breathes out hard at the touch of his fingers and Mac watches his face avidly, the way he bites his lip when Mac sinks in to the knuckle. Dennis’s eyes land on him with a vengeful look. He kisses Mac on the edge of a moan and Mac closes his eyes with it, jolting into the touch when Dennis’s slick hand lands suddenly on his cock, pulling it out of his boxers and jerking it slowly, almost torturous. He drives his fingers deeper into Dennis almost as a reflex and Dennis’s hand tightens around him in response; they groan into each other’s mouths and Dennis pulls back to say: ‘now, now, I’m ready now, Mac.’

Mac doesn’t question him, all out of patience – he just nods, gasping, and pulls his fingers out hastily. Dennis positions himself over Mac and holds his cock in place as he sinks down, his face tightening and releasing as he works through it. Mac watches him with an open mouth, his hands flexing nervously on Dennis’s hips as he shudders, leaning his head back and trying like hell to wait for Dennis to adjust.

Dennis doesn’t seem to have any such plans; he gives himself about five seconds before he lifts up and slams back down again, making Mac almost jerk up off the couch.

‘Oh,’ Mac groans, like he’s just been punched. He can’t help closing his eyes and fucking up into that beautiful heat, and when he opens them again Dennis is watching him with an almost foreboding intensity, rising up slowly and dropping down again fast just to see what it does to Mac’s face, his lip curling in a winded smirk. 

‘C’mon, that all you got? Put your back into it,’ Dennis goads him breathlessly, and Mac tries to narrow his eyes but it’s hard when he feels this good. He slides a hand around the back of Dennis’s neck and yanks him in for a bruising kiss, punctuating it with a harsh thrust upwards. Dennis’s mouth opens against his as he makes a high, shocked noise, and Mac grins unrepentantly, biting Dennis’s lower lip.

He fucks Dennis hard and fast until Dennis isn’t so much riding him as holding on, clinging to Mac’s shoulders as he shudders, one hand worming between them to jerk himself off. Mac buries his face in Dennis’s neck and sucks a series of marks into his sweat soaked skin just to give himself something to concentrate on. Dennis gives one final raking clench of his fingernails down Mac’s back and yanks him up for a rough kiss as he comes, breathing out hard against Mac’s mouth and stripping his cock again and again, writhing down on Mac’s dick with languorous, luxuriating grace. Mac fucks him through it with brutal thrusts and shudders up into him one final time as he comes with a groan, his hands biting into Dennis’s hips so hard he must leave a bruise, flashbulbs of pleasure going off behind his eyes.

‘Holy shit,’ Dennis pants, draped over his shoulder.

‘You’re telling me,’ Mac says dazedly, falling back against the couch with a loud exhalation. Dennis just kind of falls with him, making a startled noise at how it shifts their hips. Mac’s hands soothe over his back mindlessly. He feels like he needs ten showers, he’s so soaked in sweat. So many endorphins are flooding him right now he feels like he just took down a helicopter, and then a tiger, and also a monster truck, and then fucked Dennis in a bathtub full of money. ‘I mean … holy shit.’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says vaguely. ‘That was – that was – you’re _good_ at that.’

‘Thanks, Dennis,’ Mac says, too surprised and exhausted to press him for further praise. ‘You’re not so bad yourself.’

Dennis tries to bite him on the shoulder and can’t summon the energy to really grip, so it turns into a disgruntled, messy kind of kiss.

‘You know that shirt cost me $200,’ he says muzzily after a while.

‘So it lost a few buttons,’ Mac says, waving a careless hand. ‘It’s still worth $197.’

Dennis smacks a hand against his chest at that but can’t seem to follow through with an insult. He just hangs, limp and breathing hard, against Mac.

‘I didn’t even mean for tonight to end up like that,’ he says after a while. He still sounds completely out of it. Mac should really fuck him into incoherence more often. ‘I didn’t even plan it. I mean, fuck.’

Mac grins smugly.

Dennis pulls back maybe an inch and squints up at him. ‘Was that tacky, back in the club? With the grinding and everything?’

Mac rolls his eyes.

‘It’s a gay club, Dennis. You see harder shit than that waiting in line outside.’

‘You really have spent a lot of time there,’ Dennis muses, tugging Mac sideways with little clenches of his hands until Mac kisses him, a light, breathy thing until Dennis turns it dirty, widening his mouth and stroking Mac’s lower lip with his tongue. Mac runs his hands down Dennis’s back with a contented sigh, thinking about just collecting him up and walking them both through to the bed. The last time he tried that he dropped Dennis in the doorway and Dennis had yowled like a cat, latching onto Mac with vengeful fingers and pulling him down too so that they landed in a heap, and developed correspondingly incriminating bruises.

Still, maybe second time’s the charm. His hands slide down to the back of Dennis’s thighs, the waistband of his jeans biting into his skin. He’s still trembling a little, hair rising at Mac’s touch.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Dennis murmurs against his mouth, and Mac grins. You can’t blame a guy for trying.

\---

The summer ticks on in a cavalcade of half-failed schemes, opportunities found and squandered, but Mac can’t bring himself to really mind. So what if this summer isn’t any kinder to them than any other has been? There are plenty more of them to come: endless days of heat with Dennis napping, slumped against him on the couch. They’ve got lots of time.

‘What d’you wanna do today?’ he murmurs against Dennis’s collarbone one syrupy stretch of a weekend morning. It’s near noon and they’re still in bed, and he doesn’t feel capable of moving unless Dennis prods him into it. He wants to stay here, circling Dennis’s pulse with the point of his tongue while Dennis shivers and sighs. Mac is very committed in his quest to learn the map of Dennis’s nerve endings like the back of his hand: he’s really putting in the hours. He’d never previously been aware he was capable of such a stringent work ethic.

Dennis bumps his hips up against Mac’s and grins savagely when Mac groans.

‘I’ll give you two guesses, and the first one doesn’t count.’

Mac grins back slowly and doesn’t bother answering in the ensuing chaos; it doesn’t seem to be necessary.

‘Shit, wait,’ Dennis pants, pulling back at the last minute. He blinks at Mac. ‘It’s Sunday.’

‘So?’ Mac squints.

‘So …’ Dennis trails off, clearly nonplussed. He licks his lips and Mac zeroes in on immediately, leaning back in until Dennis taps him irritably on the shoulder. ‘Pay attention, Mac. It’s Sunday, and you’re a gigantic freaking Catholic. Shouldn’t you be like, getting thee to church?’

‘I guess I’m not going today,’ Mac says easily, leaning back down with a grin. Dennis stops him with a firm hand, staring him down. He’s wearing that expression, the one that makes Mac groan internally, shoring up for a long campaign.

‘No, you don’t – what’s going on here? Is this like a regular thing now? Are you finally seeing sense?’

Mac rolls his eyes and shuffles off Dennis, lying back next to him with his eyes on the ceiling.

‘Way to kill the mood, bro,’ he complains. ‘You’ve never wanted me to go to church before.’

‘I don’t _want_ you to go now,’ Dennis tells him waspishly. ‘I just want to know why you suddenly don’t care. It’s weird and out of character. Except – hold on a second.’ He narrows his eyes. Mac can almost see the calendar pages flipping backwards in his brain. ‘You didn’t go last week either, did you? Oh my God, have you been skipping church to bang me, Mac? I don’t think Jesus is going to approve.’

He laughs at his own joke but Mac only gives a smile that’s unconvincing at best and goes back to staring at the ceiling. Dennis’s gaze grows slowly more incredulous as it burns into the side of Mac’s head.

‘Um,’ he says eventually, in a pointed tone. ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’

‘Say what, Dennis?’ Mac snaps. ‘Congratulations on noticing I haven’t been to church in three months. Really good job. Excellent observational skills.’

‘Three months,’ Dennis says evenly after a minute of tense silence. Then, almost to himself: ‘Is it really only three months?’

Mac winces.

‘Yep,’ he says, popping the p. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ Dennis snaps irritably. ‘I didn’t mean – it feels like longer, that’s all.’

Mac looks at him in surprise. Dennis hastily starts examining his cuticles in closer detail than seems necessary, and doesn’t make eye contact. Mac shifts against the bed awkwardly, rolling over onto his side but trying not to get in Dennis’s face about it. Tiptoeing along the moment as best he can.

‘I get that,’ he says eventually. ‘Feels like – natural, or whatever. Like it’s always been like this.’

The set of Dennis’s shoulders relaxes slightly.

‘Except you’re so much less of a dick now you’re getting laid on the regular,’ Dennis snorts. His eyes flicker up to Mac. He clears his throat. ‘So what, dude? You’re just not gonna go anymore? That’s all she wrote?’

‘All who wrote?’ Mac asks, and Dennis waves an irritated hand. Mac sighs. ‘I guess. Just doesn’t seem right.’

The priest at his church hadn’t ever given a sermon explicitly on the sins of homosexuality, and in fact seemed fairly reluctant to discuss it whenever Mac brought it up in confession, but Mac didn’t need to read between the lines to know what the absence of approval meant. It was written all over the priest’s gaze whenever it slid over Mac’s with uncomfortable haste; it didn’t require any critical thinking on Mac’s part at all. This thing with Dennis – it was a choice, and Mac’s already made it. It’s not his fault it took Dennis this long to notice.

‘Doesn’t seem right?’ Dennis prods. He props himself up on an elbow and watches Mac unabashedly. ‘For what reason, exactly?’

‘Why do you care so much, dude?’ Mac asks, irritated. ‘It doesn’t involve you at all. You never came to church with me.’

He’d detonated a landmine on Mac’s ability to convince himself he was straight that one time on the church steps, but Mac doesn’t feel like this is a good time to bring that up.

‘It does involve me if you’re going around all mopey because you think God’s mad that you’re banging me! Don’t put that on my shoulders, man,’ Dennis says, sitting up so he can glare at Mac properly. ‘I won’t have that weight on my conscience.’

‘It’s not on your conscience, bro, it’s my choice not to go,’ Mac says, and he realises his voice is rising, loud with anger, but it’s just like Dennis, really, to make this all about him – to take something Mac’s been shoving down into a lockbox in his brain whenever it came up and seize it in his grasping hands, yank it out into the light and start poking holes in it. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

‘But you don’t think you’re going to hell or anything, right?’ Dennis presses. ‘For doing this with me?’

Mac shrugs. There’s a light buzzing sensation in his ears., getting steadily louder. He turns back over to stare at the ceiling again. It’s easier to have this conversation while floating slightly above his body. He wonders if this is what Dennis feels like when he drifts off wherever he goes when he gets too mad to stay inside his body, whenever his eyes get glazed and he frowns at Mac as if he remembers his face but can’t put a name to it. And then when he lands back inside himself with a shudder, a pained twist of his mouth, as if it hurts to come back down.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dennis says under his breath. ‘I mean – okay. Okay. I know we were all like, ‘blah blah, we’re not good people, we’re going to hell’ on the cruise ship, but that’s like – that was more _generally_ about how we’re bad people, right? And not for gay reasons. You know that, right?’

Mac shrugs again. Who knows? If he was going to hell for general bad person reasons, why not throw homosexuality in there as part of the bargain? He doesn’t know how it all falls out when God evaluates all the weights and counters; it always felt like enough that he made the effort to resist, before, even if he couldn’t change it. And now he doesn’t even have that.

‘What if we found you a different church?’ Dennis asks, a slightly manic note in his voice now. ‘Would that work? Different exterior but still a channel straight to Jesus, how’s that sound?’

‘Oh my God, why do you care?’ Mac asks loudly, sitting up and glaring at Dennis. ‘First you go off at me for going to church and not being like, honest with myself, then I do what you want and you go off at me again for not going! What the hell do you want me to do, Dennis?’

Dennis stirs, looking a shade uncomfortable now. He opens and shuts his mouth a few times before speaking.

‘That was different,’ he protests. ‘I was – it was about –’

‘That was different because you were trying to get me into bed,’ Mac suggests evenly, cocking an eyebrow. ‘Is that why it was different?’

‘No,’ Dennis mutters, very pointedly not looking at him. He sighs. ‘Maybe a little bit. But it worked out great, didn’t it?’

He tries for a sly smile but Mac just stares at him, wordless, until it slides off his face.

‘I didn’t mean that you had to stop going altogether, bro, not if you still want to,’ Dennis tries again. ‘I just wanted you to stop feeling like shit all the time about being gay, and I thought, you know, church seemed like a part of that. You shouldn’t stop going ‘cause you’re like, secretly ashamed of us or something. I mean for one thing that’s kind of insulting, Mac. And besides, there are tons of Christians who love gays, why can’t you find some of them?’

‘Not many of them are Catholic,’ Mac says grimly, going back to staring at the ceiling. He’s developing a hollow, aching sensation in his chest. He’d been doing so well not thinking about this for the last three months, and now look what’s happened. It stings to hear Dennis call him ashamed, because that’s something he’s been avoiding thinking about too, but there aren’t many ways around it – even if that’s not what it is, that’s definitely what it looks like.

He turns to Dennis again, although he can’t quite make eye contact with him. He settles for the high angle of Dennis’s cheekbone instead.

‘It’s not because I’m ashamed,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s because I didn’t want to go there and lie.’

Dennis settles back down against the pillows, frowning at him.

‘Lie to who?’

‘Who do you think,’ Mac rolls his eyes. ‘The priest, the congregation. God.’

He gives a short, humourless laugh.

‘I didn’t want to get all this, have all this –’ he gestures between them, the warm space of their bed – ‘and then turn around and pretend I didn’t want it, if anybody asked me. I didn’t want to have to lie.’

Dennis watches him in contemplative silence for a minute while Mac just lies there, heaviness anchoring him to the bed.

‘That’s dumb,’ Dennis tells him after a while. His mouth twitches. ‘It’s kind of sweet, but it’s still dumb. Isn’t God going to know anyway, seeing as he’s omniscient or whatever? He sees everything, right? And as for you actually _lying_ about it – that’s not something I’m worried about. Like, at all. I mean let’s be real, Mac – you gave the Guigino’s hostess a potted history of our relationship last week, and we didn’t spend longer than thirty seconds talking to her. You can’t keep your mouth shut for shit.’

‘Well, she’s seen us in there a lot over the years, I thought she might like to know how things shook out,’ Mac says in slightly wounded tones. ‘And besides, there’s _tons_ of stuff about us that I haven’t told anyone. Like that thing with the zip ties, and the –’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Dennis rolls his eyes, ‘I know that, dude, but those are details. The central fact of our relationship, Mac? You can’t keep that to yourself for love nor money. So I really don’t think you need to worry about like, keeping this a tortured secret or something. The priest probably already knows.’

‘What?’ Mac asks, startled. ‘What, you think someone told him?’

‘No, I think he’s been hearing your confession for the last twenty years,’ Dennis says with a smirk. ‘And you’re gay as shit.’

‘That is true,’ Mac says contemplatively. He wrinkles his brow. ‘Oh dude, that’s totally weird, thinking about the priest knowing that. Ew. Gross.’

‘So let’s not think about it anymore, I’m bored of this conversation,’ Dennis announces. ‘Go to church or don’t go to church, just don’t use me as an excuse either way. I won’t be responsible for anyone’s soul but my own, thanks.’

‘Not everything is about you,’ Mac tells him, but it probably doesn’t hold much weight when he goes so willingly, folds easily into Dennis’s arms like that. Maybe it’s an assumption he’ll correct when Dennis stops kissing him but then again, it’s Sunday and Mac hasn’t been to church in three months. Anything is possible. Maybe he won’t.

\---

Except, of course, that’s not the end of it.

‘David!’ Mac exclaims. ‘Scott! Wow, what are you guys doing here? It’s great to see you.’

‘It’s good to see you too, Mac,’ David says from the doorway of the bar, grinning slightly. He elbows Scott almost imperceptibly in the side and Scott sighs. He’s wearing such an obvious expression of reluctance that Mac would be offended, except, well. The gang did sink their church’s cruise ship that one time, and previous to that, Mac had had that weird three-way make out session with the two of them that, in hindsight, Scott hadn’t exactly been wild about. Reluctance is probably the best Mac could hope for under the circumstances.

‘Yeah,’ Scott adds unconvincingly. Mac grins at them, prepared to puncture the tension with sheer enthusiasm if necessary.

‘So what are you guys doing here?’ he asks. ‘Just dropping by, or – oh, hey, you guys remember Dennis, right? And this is Charlie, and Dee, and Frank –’

‘We remember,’ David tells him hastily, waving a hand at the gang. Dennis raises a hand in greeting from behind the bar, giving a small smile. Mac tries to telegraph exactly how little interest he has in fucking either David or Scott, but Dennis isn’t looking at him, so the effect is lost.

‘Sorry about your boat, dude,’ Charlie says sincerely. ‘It’s fucked up how that whole thing went down.’

‘Yeah, that was messed up,’ Mac tacks on. ‘Kind of a weird situation, huh?’

‘Weird, criminal,’ Scott pipes up with a thin smile. ‘Who can say?’

‘Right,’ David jumps in, looking between Scott and Mac with an uncomfortably fixed grin. He claps his hands together. ‘So, anyway, Mac, we came here to talk to you about something.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah, do you think we could –’

‘Oh, sure,’ Mac agrees. ‘We’ll go on through to the backroom, follow me.’

It turns out they haven’t come to belatedly sue the gang for damages, which is a weight off Mac’s mind.

‘We came to talk to you about the fellowship,’ David starts. ‘It’s our understanding that you’ve been experiencing some difficulties getting your current priest to accept your new relationship, and we came to extend –’

‘Um,’ Mac interrupts, frowning and leaning across the desk towards him. ‘Hold up a sec. How do you know about that?’

David looks trapped. Scott says precisely nothing, sat there with his arms crossed and wearing a smug expression.

‘Conjecture,’ David replies after a minute. ‘You and Dennis are together now, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Mac frowns. ‘But I haven’t – I didn’t tell anyone in the congregation about that. How do you guys –’

‘That’s beside the point,’ David’s smooth voice rolls over him, his eyes intent, and Mac doesn’t protest. Just because he’s a taken man now doesn’t mean he’s immune. Or blind. ‘We think there could be a place for you in our community, if that’s something you want.’

‘Really?’ Mac squints. ‘Even after the cruise?’

‘Even after the cruise,’ David confirms. His smile is more genuine now than it’s been since they arrived. ‘To err is human –’

‘To forgive totally badass, yeah, I get it,’ Mac finishes absently, and David opens his mouth and then shuts it again, giving a slow, bemused nod. ‘But like, I still don’t get how –’

‘We’ll just leave it with you,’ David interrupts for the last time, standing up. Scott is already out of his chair and halfway to the door, looking like a starving man in sight of an oasis at the thought of getting out of here. ‘You know where we are if you need us.’

Mac trails after them into the bar, waving a confused goodbye when David turns to grin dazzlingly at him from the door. When he turns back to the rest of the gang they’re all watching him with inquisitive expressions, apart from Dennis, who is watching the door slowly swing closed through narrowed eyes.

‘So?’ he demands, his voice sharp, still staring at the door. ‘What did they want?’

‘I think they wanted me to join their church, dude,’ Mac says, brow furrowed. ‘But it’s totally weird ‘cause like, they know we’re a thing now, and they know I haven’t been going to my regular church –’

‘You haven’t been going to church?’ Charlie asks with raised eyebrows. ‘Congratulations, dude! You’ve finally broken free.’

He claps Mac on the back and Mac shuffles out from under it, irritated.

‘Shut up, Charlie,’ he snaps. ‘It’s not like that.’

‘Oh,’ Charlie says. ‘Well, then I guess I take it back.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Mac says, not really listening. ‘Say, Dennis, how do you suppose they –’

‘I’ve, uh, actually got some errands to run,’ Dennis interrupts him, not making eye contact as he makes for the door, pulling his car keys out of his pocket. He shoots Mac a quick smile on his way out. ‘You can get a ride home with Dee, right?’

He doesn’t wait for an answer before he’s out the door. Mac frowns as it swings shut gently, perplexed by this entire situation. He turns to the rest of the gang.

‘Do any of you –’

‘Not a clue,’ says Dee.

‘Nope,’ is Charlie’s response.

‘Nuh uh, not getting involved,’ mumbles Frank.

‘Right,’ Mac says, turning back to the door. ‘Right.’

‘I just don’t know how they knew about us,’ he’s telling Dennis later when they’re home. Dennis is stirring the pasta sauce on the stove so studiously Mac is a little concerned he’s about the fall face-first into it. ‘It’s kind of freaking me out.’

‘Why?’ Dennis mumbles. ‘It’s not like it’s a state secret. Pass me the salt.’

Mac gets it from the cupboard and passes it absentmindedly.

‘Yeah, but we don’t exactly move in the same circles, so someone we know must have told them, and I wanna know –’

‘Does it really matter?’ Dennis interrupts, pushing past him to get plates out of the cupboard. ‘Anyway, what about what they said?’

‘What, about going back to the fellowship?’

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says, finally looking at him. He’s waving a wooden spoon around in exasperation, the intensity of his expression bordering on a glare. ‘You know, the whole point of their visit. Are you gonna go?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mac says thoughtfully. He toes the linoleum near the fridge, where there used to be a loose section that would flip up and reveal the horrifying dusty concrete underneath. The refurbishment saw to that, which Mac thinks is kind of a shame. It was that kind of shoddy workmanship that gave the place its off-centre charm. ‘I mean … maybe.’

‘Maybe?’ Dennis asks, in what sounds like sheer disbelief. When Mac looks up he’s abandoned dinner to brace himself against the counter with one hand, the other on his hip, looking at Mac like he wants to dump the contents of the saucepan over his head. ‘After you’ve been moping around after your old one all this time?’

‘I haven’t been moping,’ Mac argues. ‘That’s a total exaggeration, dude, you only realised I wasn’t going like a week ago.’

‘Yeah, and since then I’ve been noticing a lot more, how’s that?’ Dennis snaps nonsensically. ‘Look, man, why don’t you just give it a try? You loved all the singing and shit, remember?’

‘Maybe I like having my Sundays free now,’ Mac says belligerently, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Maybe I don’t want to go back.’

Maybe he doesn’t want to face an entire congregation of people whose boat he helped sink, and who probably know he’s gay into the bargain.

But, a hopeful voice in his head reminds him, it had been different there. It had been _nicer_ , by about a million degrees. God hadn’t felt like this super scary guy just waiting for Mac to fuck up. And David and Scott certainly didn’t seem scared of going to hell for anything they did together, so – so why should Mac?

‘But I thought you wanted –’ Dennis cuts himself off and starts massaging his temples. ‘I thought you wanted a new church, that was the point of this whole – will you just think about it?’ And then when Mac still hesitates, his voice goes abruptly sweet, pleading – ‘For me?’

Mac straightens up, raising his eyebrows. Dennis loves to throw this justification around even more now that they’re together, but maybe he’s picked the one time Mac isn’t willing to fetch.

‘For you?’ he questions. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’

Dennis opens his mouth and closes it again. He abruptly turns back to the food and starts plating up, avoiding Mac’s eyes.

‘Well,’ he flounders, ‘if it concerns your immortal soul, then it’s my business, right?’

‘You don’t believe in my immortal soul,’ Mac points out, frowning. ‘You don’t believe in _your_ immortal soul. Last Sunday you were like, don’t get your Catholic guilt all over me, Mac, it’ll never come out of the sheets –’

‘That’s not the point,’ Dennis snaps. ‘Look, why don’t you just go along on Sunday, see what you think –’

‘Why are you pushing this so hard?’ Mac asks slowly, and there it is – only a flicker of panic crossing Dennis’s face before he smooths it away. But it’s enough. The light bulb goes on.

‘Oh my God, Dennis, did you go to David and Scott for me?’ Mac asks, his voice climbing to an embarrassing pitch. ‘Did you go to them behind my back and ask them to let me into gay church? Is that how they knew we were together? Holy shit, Dennis, that is so _sweet_ –’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Dennis says over him, loudly. He straightens up, running a hand over his face. ‘I don’t care, I _don’t_ want to – just. Look.’ He blows out a long breath. ‘Can we just eat our dinner, please, and talk about this later? Can we just do that?’

‘Aw, you don’t want me to worry about burning in hell for you,’ Mac says, voice still in the process of melting over the overwhelming, unexpecting solicitude of it.

Dennis visibly shudders.

‘Please stop talking,’ Dennis begs him, thrusting a plate of spaghetti towards Mac like he’s issuing a challenge. His hands are white knuckled with strain. Mac takes the plate, still grinning, and doesn’t stop even when Dennis looks up midway through dinner and kicks him hard in the ankle.

‘So,’ Dennis says, obviously reluctant, when they’ve finished. He sighs, toying with the label on his beer and refusing to look at Mac. ‘You know. Are you going to go or not?’

Mac rolls his eyes.

‘Yes, dumbass,’ he tells Dennis, shaking his head when Dennis’s shoulders lose some of their tension. He can’t help the way his voice softens, the words coming out feather light. ‘After you did that for me? Come on, dude.’

Dennis rolls his eyes.

‘Don’t do me any favours,’ he snaps. ‘You don’t owe me anything.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ Mac argues. ‘I mean, that’s not why I’m gonna go back – their choir kicked ass, remember? – but I totally do owe you, man.’

Dennis’s forehead furrows in disapproval.

‘What do you –’

‘It’s just so _romantic_ ,’ Mac starts with a grin so bright it’s almost vicious, and Dennis boggles at him, mouth open with disbelief.

‘You wanted to make things easier on me. You wanted to _help_ ,’ Mac continues, relentless, and Dennis is _squirming_ with it, his face twisting with distaste, but Mac won’t stop, he can’t. This is going straight in his mental vault when they’re done here; this is going in the safe along with the way Dennis had looked at him when Mac was advancing across the floor of Paddy’s, scared and brave and wanting Mac to kiss him even more than he was afraid of it. This moment isn’t going anywhere, no matter how badly Dennis wants it to. ‘You were trying to make me _happy.’_

‘Oh God, don’t say it like that,’ Dennis says, distraught. He runs a panicky hand through his hair, catching Mac’s eye and scowling. ‘And for the love of all that is holy, stop grinning at me. You look demented, and you’re going to put me off my beer.’

‘I’m not sorry,’ Mac says, smiling so hard it comes out almost giddy, and he doesn’t flinch when Dennis glares at him.

‘Don’t get used to it,’ Dennis mutters, taking a long, belligerent swig of his drink. He’s taken hold of Mac’s hand across the table without seeming to realise it, though, so Mac decides not to take his tone to heart.

\---

‘So you never even used any of my ideas?’ Charlie asks, clearly disappointed. His hand hovers halfway to his mouth, scattering popcorn kernels into his lap and all over the new, shiny three seater couch they couldn’t extort anyone into chipping in for, even though it’s technically for gang use. No matter how sweetly Dennis had argued that installing a projector in Mac’s old bedroom and using it for gang movie nights was a fundamentally charitable move and they should all contribute, no one else had seen it like that. Frank had voted for beanbag chairs instead, and they had only narrowly overruled him.

Mac heaves an internal sigh.

‘Popcorn goes _in_ your mouth, Charlie,’ he points out, and Charlie jerks back into movement, scattering popcorn even further afield. ‘And no, dude. They were all super creepy, like that I should start doctoring what Dennis ate and following him around everywhere and stuff. It was like, way over the line.’

‘Whatever,’ Charlie rolls his eyes. ‘It’s not bad if you’re putting _good_ stuff in their food. Like vitamins and energy. Then it’s helping –’

‘Still creepy,’ Dee interjects, dropping down next to Charlie with a contented sigh. ‘You really need to work on your definition of ‘helping’, Charlie.’

Her eyes are bright, excited; she looks closer to thirty than forty when she smiles like that. Judging by Charlie’s slightly glazed expression, Mac isn’t the only one who’s noticed. He makes brief, exasperated eye contact with Frank over in the lone beanbag chair, which they’d eventually talked him down to.

‘You ain’t got nothing to brag about,’ Frank tells him, snorting, going back to his hot dog. ‘You were worse.’

‘Huh?’ Charlie asks vaguely, as if either of them were speaking to him. He’s not even pretending to pay attention. Dee is smiling ever so slightly, head tilted toward Charlie but not quite looking at him. Mac looks at Frank again and silently begs for rescue. Frank just shoots him a mean grin. 

Dennis trails in from the kitchen holding a bowl of M&Ms and immediately frowns at the seating arrangements.

‘Dee, Charlie, scoot,’ he orders, and they look up at him with identical frowns.

‘Why?’ Dee asks belligerently. ‘It’s _my_ movie night, it’s my damn movie, why should I have to get up?’

‘Is it so you can sit next to your _boy_ friend?’ Charlie simpers.

‘Yep,’ Dennis replies cheerfully. ‘Now get.’

Charlie rolls his eyes but shuffles off the sofa with a minimum of grumbling. Before he can get far Dee snags him by the shoulder and pushes him down firmly until he’s sat on the floor in front of her, back against her legs. He cranes around to look up at her with a small frown, like he’s not quite sure what just happened but he’s not about to protest. Dee leans back, staring at the paused opening credits frozen on the wall with a serene expression. She doesn’t take her hand off Charlie’s shoulder.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Dennis mutters, shaking his head before he sits down between Mac and Dee. Mac puts an arm around him immediately and Dennis surreptitiously leans into it, pretending it’s just so he can look for the remote. ‘What were you talking about, anyway? What about Charlie’s weird ideas?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing, just –’ Mac starts, but Charlie cuts him off.

‘It was so girly, dude, like, before you were together he had this whole big plan to like, make you happy again and shit, he was gonna make sure you ate regularly and that you got enough sleep, and get hold of the films you like, and pay your parking fines so you didn’t get all stressed out and cry, and he was even gonna look after you when you were sick.’

‘Oh, yeah, that,’ Dennis says dismissively, although he’s smirking a little. Mac’s cheeks are slowly blooming red. ‘I know all about that.’

‘You do?’ Charlie asks.

‘Well, he wasn’t exactly subtle, bro,’ Dennis rolls his eyes. Mac frowns.

‘I’m sat right here, you know,’ he says, annoyed. ‘And you weren’t so subtle with the church thing, either,’ he adds, although it’s undercut by the way his voice softens.

Dennis refuses to look at him, staring up at the paused credits as if they’re the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

‘We watching this movie or not?’ he asks loudly.

Mac snatches the remote out of his hand, grinning.

‘Can you two please just shut up so we can watch my movie?’ Dee interrupts, looking two seconds away from dumping the popcorn all over them and smearing the butter into the couch cushions.

‘Urgh, fine,’ Mac sighs and presses play, and then everybody yells at Frank to get up and turn off the light until he sighs and does it. A hush falls over them when the movie starts rolling. Despite himself, Mac has to hand it to Dee: she really showed up for this. She went to set every day for months, and she put on a goddamn stupid costume, and she waited out all the real actors doing their scenes and then she did her tiny one liners, and she made a goddamn movie.

Or in theory she did.

‘When do you come in, Dee?’ Charlie asks after half an hour, and Dee swats him on the shoulder, hissing at him to be quiet.

‘We’re not quiet in movie theatres, Dee, you think we’re going to be quiet in the privacy of our own goddamn home?’ Dennis asks. ‘And Charlie’s asking a valid question – where the hell are you? You’re the only reason we’re watching this movie and so far, you haven’t been onscreen once. If I wanted to watch a movie about people restraining themselves from fucking each other while they spoke in weird old timey language, I’d watch something made by the BBC.’

‘I’m coming up,’ Dee tells them, a slight waver in her voice. She frowns at the screen. ‘It must be – they must have just cut some of my early stuff, that’s all.’

They cut some of the early stuff, for sure. As it transpires, they also cut all the middle stuff, and most of the end stuff.

They sit in suffocating silence as the credits roll.

‘Two lines,’ Dee says blankly. ‘They kept _two_ of my lines. I was there all goddamn summer and – two lines.’

Charlie turns around to look at Mac and Dennis, who shrug. Mac puffs out a long, awkward breath while Dennis screws up his face, clearly trying to think of something to say. Charlie twists back around and pats Dee gingerly on the knee. She just continues to stare at the never-ending list of crew members, not looking at any of them.

‘Yeah,’ Dennis says eventually, drawing it out long and slow. It sounds like something else should go on the end of it, and Mac elbows him in the ribs to knock it out, but then Dennis just winces and glares at him, and elbows him right back.

‘Not helping, bro,’ Mac hisses, eyes flickering to Dee and back again.

‘Well, look at it this way,’ Frank starts, and out of the corner of his eye Mac catches the abruptly shuttering expression on Dee’s face: the dull recognition of what’s coming.

‘Dee, I thought it was great,’ Charlie says suddenly, interrupting Frank mid-sentence. Dee jerks in surprise, looking down at him. ‘It was really great, how you delivered that one line about the –’

‘The policeman,’ Dennis fills in, and Charlie snaps his fingers in agreement without looking away from Dee. She’s staring down at Charlie with her eyes wide and shiny, and Mac would recognise that volatile potential for gratitude to morph into contempt anywhere.

‘Really?’ she says after a moment, her voice wavering. Mac and Dennis breathe out in sync and Mac squeezes Dennis’s shoulder: disaster averted.

‘Yeah, sure,’ Dennis says, his mouth turning up in a half-smile. He jostles her shoulder and she turns to look at him, unsure but willing to be convinced. ‘You did great, sis. A really great job.’

‘Yeah?’ she asks again, eyes flickering between the three of them.

Charlie gives her a big smile and nods.

‘It was like, super funny,’ Mac jumps in, grasping for something to say, then catches Dennis giving him a wide-eyed look: don’t overdo it. ‘I mean, it was decent.’

‘Thanks,’ Dee says, a little dry. She blinks and turns away for a second, hand going up to her eyes. At some point, Charlie’s hand must have taken hers, or maybe it was the other way around – maybe she reached out and Charlie was there to help, but either way, it’s happening. It looks like a firm grip, too; not easily broken. 

‘Dee’s first real movie,’ Mac marvels, staring up at the screen as the credits tick back over onto the movie menu. ‘Hey, it’s another clip for your reel, Dee.’

‘I guess it is,’ she says, brightening at the prospect.

She and Charlie are still holding hands when they leave, Dee’s expression daring anyone to point it out. But Dennis lets it go with a serenely fixed expression and even Frank lets it slide, although he watches Dee’s back as they leave with the narrowed eyes of a man who is aware he’ll shortly need to adjust to sleeping alone. It’s like they’ve all silently agreed it’s an extra Dee day or something: it just isn’t in Mac to torment her and Charlie right now. They can always rib them to hell and back for it tomorrow, or the next day, or the next: they have more than enough time.

‘When are we going to get that cat, Mac?’ Dennis asks later when they’re getting ready for bed. ‘Charlie kept dropping hints about the cat bed, and I think if we don’t get one soon he’s straight up going to steal it from us.’

‘Oh,’ Mac says, in the middle of stripping off his shirt. ‘We still need to do that, huh.’

‘Yes,’ Dennis says, rolling his eyes. ‘They don’t just turn up at your door, bro.’

‘Try telling Charlie that,’ Mac grins.

‘We should get one from the shelter,’ Dennis says thoughtfully, climbing into bed and stretching out, face crumpling up in a yawn. ‘Something fluffy.’

‘Something that needs us,’ Mac hums, slipping into bed behind him. Dennis makes a mumbling noise and leans back insistently against him until Mac throws an arm around his waist.

‘Something that claws and scratches,’ Dennis says sleepily, grinning with his eyes closed. He puts out heat like a portable furnace when they’re wound up together like this. Mac’s thumb rubs over the soft curve of his hip. ‘So we can get it to attack intruders.’

‘Don’t need it to, bro,’ Mac says quietly, watching him. ‘You’ve got me for that.’

Dennis’s mouth twitches and he twists around without opening his eyes to give Mac a warm, slow kiss.

‘Something with spirit, then,’ he amends when he pulls back, his eyes opening in a brief, amused flash of blue. ‘Something badass.’

‘Something that isn’t afraid of anything,’ Mac tells him, and Dennis nods with a slight smile as he kisses Mac again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all there is! I imagine they'll remember to get a cat eventually. 
> 
> It took me three months to write this and another two to edit and post, which means that it's been with me longer than any other extended piece of writing I've posted here and I'm not sure what I'm going to do now it's over. Write another, maybe, or rediscover what the outside world looks like. Either way, it means a lot to me that so many of you have been reading along as I've been posting it. I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've enjoyed writing it, and thank you for stopping by <3

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at tumblr under the same username, come say hi/yell at me about macdennis


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